Of Elevators and Muses
by S. Yang Lau
Summary: Bakura takes an interest in Ryou, his enigmatic neighbor. Confident that he is Ryou's only hope for normalcy, Bakura makes it a priority to better Ryou's life, much to the latter's initial distaste. However, no good deed goes unpunished; as Bakura falls victim to confusing feelings for the man, a Ryou integrated in society is a Ryou who no longer has time for Bakura. RXB. AU
1. Elevator

**Author's Note:** Thanks for clicking here! Enjoy!

**Disclaimer: **I do not own **Yugioh! **™; it belongs to Kazuki Takahashi. I just own the storyline written under here.

**Warnings: **It's an **Alternate Universe** fic. There is foul language. This will eventually contain strong homosexuality themes.

The names of the characters are written last name first, followed by first name. I gave Bakura a new last name (杳代), or Youtai, which loosely can be interpreted as "mysterious or obscure era." It sort of has to do with his unconventional origins from the actual **Yugioh!** series. This is using the "Chinese" pronunciation, also called the _on_ reading. I had originally used 有待 with the loose meaning of "uncompleted", with the kanji 有, meaning "possess", and 待, which is the same character from 待つ, the plain form of "to wait". Err, it was supposed to contrast with the kanji of Ryou's name, 了, which means "completed." I changed the kanji spelling because for some reason, there was just something off about 有待 that I couldn't put my finger on… I'm not a kanji expert or anything, but... I tried. Hahahaha, that's what counts, eh?

* * *

Inhale. Pause. Exhale.

Inhale. Pause. Exhale.

Youtai Bakura was known for using the time in his apartment building's elevator to get his well-deserved breaks from the rest of the world.

Kaiba Seto was an uptight jackass when it came to giving his employees even five minutes of break to let them smoke in peace, so Bakura never dared to light up in the workplace. The employee in question seriously needed the job, even if he did work only on designing characters for the pretentious asshole's video games. Taking a few minutes away from his job might as well equal a permission slip for death, and knowing Kaiba, that death wasn't going to be a pretty one.

He wasn't allowed to smoke on this train rides to and from Kaiba Corp either, and though Bakura had indeed tried it once or twice, a few quick hauls to Domino Police Station and some serious monetary threats stopped him from trying again permanently.

His apartment building neighbors knew better than to tell him off for lighting up in the elevator. No one has ever been able to stop him, or even bothered to file a complaint. Looking like a crazed man with his long white hair sticking up at odd angles and his blood-red (and often blood-shot) eyes did that to people.

Most neighbors have gone to ignore it, and majority of those also prayed daily that they wouldn't be misfortunate enough to be in the elevator with a lit cigarette if there was ever an occasion where the large contraption would become stuck between floors.

Inhale. Pause. Exhale.

Luckily, the elevator rarely broke down, and so, life in Domino City goes on relatively smoothly.

Inhale. Pause. Exhale.

It was late one Thursday evening, and naturally chilly for late February. Throwing out the stub of the cigarette he had just finished, Bakura briskly walked into the elevator. He didn't bother to hold the doors open as a second person briskly walked in, or even look up; Bakura wasn't known for his brilliant conversations with his neighbors.

After pressing the button for the seventh floor, he leaned comfortably against one of the chrome-colored walls with a foot against it for balance. Bakura fumbled for his cigarette pack and shook another stick out. Taking out his lighter and flipping it open, he dangled the other unlit stick from the corner of his lips before letting it catch afire.

He closed his eyes, letting the back of his messy head of white locks hit the silver wall he rested against, and exhaled a deep sigh. He could almost try to forget the inane bullshit his job partner, Mutou Yuugi, made him suffer through today. He couldn't really remember whatever insanity had spewed forth from the short man's lips this time, but only that it was something along the lines of 'Youtai-kun! What do you think about making a game based on _trading cards_?'

That Yuugi. What a dreamer.

Other than Yuugi's memorable Quote-of-the-Day, the hours had gone by quite smoothly. It would even have been a nice ride up, but then his fellow elevator rider started coughing quite heavily.

Bakura's eyes opened slowly and shoot a disgruntled look over to him.

…Or was it a her? The way whatever-the-hell-it-was was bundled up made it look like a blizzard was about to hit— black, long pea-coat, thick light blue scarf, and black cotton gloves.

It was staring straight at the red no-smoking sign right next to the doors. Bakura lazily looked down at the burning cigarette in his mouth.

Well, talk about suave.

Just for the hell of it, Bakura purposely inhaled deeply on his cigarette and blew it in its general direction.

"_Excuse me_," the thing snarled. It would have sounded menacing, but the baby blue scarf wrapped around the bottom half of its face made the muffles hard to take seriously. "There's no smoking in here."

Bakura grinned, mildly interested at this daring individual's fighting words, and blew another ring. "You got a problem with it, lady?" He was actually still unsure of whether it was female or not—the clothes and scarf covered any gender-specific clues—but hey, his interest in this health-conscious avenger was certainly spiking now.

"I'm _male_," the Good Samaritan snapped viciously.

Ooh, this guy was a keeper.

"Could have fooled me," he drawled back, blowing the smoke directly in the irritated man's face.

He leered as the other man said nothing, and believed it to be the end of it when the man looked away, but was taken by surprise again shortly after.

"I'm asking you nicely, _would you_ _mind_ _putting out_ _that cigarette_?" The bundled-up man sounded angry now. That was unquestionably a tone Bakura had rarely, if ever, been on the receiving side of.

Bakura raised a thin dark eyebrow, and cocked his head to the side. Delicately plucking the cigarette away from his lips with slender fingers, he turned on his heel to face the other man in an abrupt, swiveling motion, and leaned in until he was only a few inches away from him.

"I don't give a fuck if you're saying it 'nicely' or not. And yeah, actually I would mind," he said, narrowing his eyes. "What the fuck are you going to do about it, asshole?"

This was hilarious. Some dude was actually trying to stand up to him. Bakura reached forward in a rather dream-like attempt to touch him, just to see if this was real.

The man appeared startled at the sudden close proximity Bakura had advanced to, and gave a violent twitch when one of Bakura's hands touched his wrist. He jerked his arm back, and pushed Bakura away with a hard shove.

"Don't _touch_ me," the man snarled loudly as Bakura stumbled and was knocked against one of the side walls, which reverberated the impact with a hallow, metallic echo.

Bakura grinned madly at him, and didn't even register that his head had started to hurt from the impact. "You have fucking guts, you know that?" There was rarely any one who dared defied him, yet this man was quite able to attack him for his rudeness... Certainly different. "You're new here, aren't you?" he asked.

Before the man could bother with an answer, the doors rolled opened pleasantly with a crisp_ ding _sound.

"_Excuse me_," the man said coldly, barreling past Bakura as he exited the elevator. Bakura didn't bother following him; instead, he stared, still unable to completely grasp what had just transpired.

Bakura's mouth twisted into a one-sided grin as he leisurely placed the cigarette back between his lips, and as the doors closed, he looked up at the screen inside the elevator that marked the floor number.

It was the sixth floor.

After departing from the elevator one floor above, Bakura sauntered his way to his own apartment. Snubbing the half-burned cigarette into the ashtray that doubled as his mantelpiece on the sole table he owned, Bakura opened one of the beers he had bought after work and took a deep swig. Kicking his legs out from under himself, Bakura looked up at his grayed ceiling, a gleam in his eyes.

"Yep," he concluded to himself. "That guy _must_ have just moved in."

Though Bakura paid relative little mind to any of his neighbors in general, he could tell when something was unusual. And this guy was _without doubt_ unusual.

He was liking him already… In a rather predatory way, of course, but that was besides the point.

Now how to learn more about this man? He knew nothing else about him other than that Pissed-Off Elevator Rider lived on his building's sixth floor. He supposed he should have followed him off the elevator when he had the chance... but now the more he thought about it, the more he realized that doing so would have ended his new source of entertainment way too abruptly.

Having shot down that idea, Bakura unexpectedly set down the opened can onto to the scratched, worn table, spilling a bit of its contents as he leaned back on the ratty couch, the rusty springs of the aged seat squealing in protest. Ignoring the pitiful cries, he smiled to the shadows in his dimly lighted home.

* * *

The white haired young man made no move to contact his target of amusement over the next few days. His work hours at Kaiba Corp were too arbitrary at the moment and interfered with inspecting the 'subject' too thoroughly. However, Bakura quickly came to the conclusion that if he did do all his shadowing work as quickly as possible, that would again quell his rare bout of interest into that of an average, nosy neighbor, and who the hell would want that?

Instead, he contented himself with slowly learning about the new neighbor downstairs simply by taking a step back and observing him from afar. Before and after his work started were the prime times to do his observations.

He noticed that his neighbor could constantly be found in the lobby in the morning checking his mail, always dressed in warm clothing. Upon closer inspection of the tiny label inserted in the designated metal frame, Bakura realized that the man's name was Bakura Ryou; the kanji of his last name was the same as his follower's first. 'Ryou' was a rather odd name, but then, his own last name wasn't listed under the one hundred most common names, either.

Each time there was post, the man would quickly shuffle through the sparse amounts of letters he would receive, as if searching for a specific letter in particular. It apparently never arrived, for the anxious man never seemed to portray any body language that contrasted to the usual, stoic form he exposed in the general public.

He _certainly_ never acted like how he did that one time on the elevator with Bakura.

Bakura also noticed that it would only be this Bakura Ryou who would check the mailbox, leading him to believe that the man probably lived by himself. The meager amount of groceries that Ryou carried home every other day reinforced this theory. Whether he was married or not was hard to deduce; the man always had gloves on, which would cover any traces of marriage.

After he checked his daily mail, the man would either disappear off back into the elevator or go out of the building, presumably for home or work respectively.

He appeared to do some kind of office work, or something that required the use of a briefcase, which he carried without fail every weekday morning and evening...Not very exciting. But then, it appeared as if Ryou's life was nothing out of the ordinary, that he was only a quiet man that spoke and acted when required, and nothing more.

Score one for Bakura's powers of deduction.

Ryou was polite to fellow neighbors; but though he appeared to be soft-spoken, Bakura highly suspected that the pleasantries were all a façade that hid the persona of the much more spiteful man he had met.

Bakura would have had no problems with silently watching the man for a few more weeks, but as fate would have it, the two met crossed fires just about two weeks later on an initially peaceful Saturday morning.

Bakura had worked overtime at work last night, with the impending deadline of Kaiba's newest game's character designs being the next morning. With his temper running high and his patience running low, even Yuugi looked awfully close to turning his usual happy grin into a parabola of misery.

He returned home at three o' clock in the morning on the same Saturday and immediately fell asleep on his couch after only shedding his coat, which rested crumpled on the floor right next to him.

Not even three more hours had passed until he was awoken by something. Bakura accidentally rolled off his couch at the unfamiliar noises that resonated from somewhere, promptly waking him up.

"Shit!" he hissed as his forehead suffered a nasty blow from one of the corners of his table. He clapped his palm roughly against his forehead to check for blood, which probably wasn't such a great idea in the case that the table really did rip a hole in his head. Luckily for him, there was just a sharp, but fluid-less pain there.

Bakura reckoned that he was alright.

He squinted in his pitch-black living room as he listened closely to where the sounds were coming from. They were wafting in from somewhere, and after a few more moments, he finally recognized that it was music, and that the tune was coming from directly downstairs.

Bakura growled, cursing the bastard who was playing music at six—he had checked his cell phone for the time— in the morning.

"Shut the hell up!" he roared at the floor. The floor didn't answer back, but the music continued.

"You just fucking wait 'til I get down there, you little…" Bakura muttered as he pulled his coat on and stormed out the door—but not before groping for the floor lamp to find the cheap jacket and adding another dent in the wall where the chipped glass shade had tipped over and smacked the plaster with an awful _crack_.

Being sleep-deprived usually made his brain churn over a little slower than normal, but if he lived in 701, whoever it was that was blasting the music directly downstairs had to live in…601. Right. 601.

Bakura congratulated himself for the surprisingly quick thinking.

He stood there now, white knuckles banging away on the painted door. He had pressed the side of his face there, and strained to hear if the music was indeed coming from this apartment. He was right; though the sounds were muffled, he could definitely make out the same melody that had blared on much louder upstairs.

He banged on the door with a boot-clad foot. The music immediately stopped, and there was a short silence. Bakura grunted, and turned to leave, until the door surprisingly opened, and a man hissing "What are _you_ doing here?" in contempt faced him.

Bakura's bad mood immediately strengthened tenfold. Not only were his eyes hurting due to the sudden flood of bright lights that appeared when the man opened the door, rendering him unable to make out anything past simple, blocky shapes, _he_ had been the one that was woken up by the music, and here was this man acting like _he_ was in the wrong. He grabbed onto the person's collar to begin a nice sound shouting match, but then a familiar twitch and shove allowed the irritated white-haired man to realize who the resident of 601 was.

It was the man from the elevator—Bakura Ryou.

"_You_!" Bakura roared as his eyes adjusted to the light. He gaped at the man, who now stood only in a cotton button-down and slacks instead of his winter attire, though the gloves were still on, oddly enough.

Bakura Ryou bore an uncanny resemblance to him; though their hair was slightly different in style, the color and length were more or less identical. They were of similar height and age, but Ryou appeared to be paler and a lot thinner than he was, almost sickly so, attributes he could not note before.

"What do you want?" Ryou gritted through clenched teeth, enunciating each syllable quite clearly. Dark brown eyes bored into the crimson ones of Bakura's.

A sliver of Bakura, deep inside of the man's mind, was immediately excited by the attitude that Ryou was displaying towards him— the mannerisms that he exhibited for him only. Another part of him was even miffed over why Ryou acted so brusquely in his presence. Yet, both were currently being squashed by the largest portion of the aggravated, sleep-deprived man that wanted nothing more than to hurt something. Or someone.

Whatever was more convenient to hurt at the moment.

Bakura narrowed his eyes. "I _want _to know what kind of idiot would listen to music at six in the morning, that's what. Turn it down—I'm trying to _sleep_."

Ryou snorted, and stepped around the words. "And since when were you so courteous to others? If I remember correctly, you were the one who was smoking in an elevator, despite _my_ requests for you to stop."

"Hey, the only one who was fucking bothered by my smoking was _you_!" Bakura hissed. Who the hell cared about all the other terrified residents at the moment who feared death by a little second hand smoke or an accidental fire , Bakura was trying to make a point here. "Your stupid music is fucking _waking me up_—!"

"Don't you _dare_ say anything about my playing!" Ryou suddenly shouted. Bakura twitched at the unexpected rage in spite of himself.

"Bakura?" Both white haired males wheeled around to face a blond young man, who currently stood in front of apartment 605, rubbing a sleepy eye. "What the hell is all this noise?"

"Go back to sleep, you bastard," Bakura snarled at the intruder. "This doesn't concern you." The blond man blinked at Bakura and scowled.

"Hello, Jounouchi-san," Ryou greeted stiffly. "This noise that you speak of, was it from the piano? Or from _this man_," he flicked a finger towards the ruffled Bakura, "over here?"

"Huh? I woke up from the yelling." Jounouchi scratched at his knotted blond locks. "You were playing the piano?" he asked incredulously to Ryou, who gave a rather ugly sneer in Bakura's direction.

That pissed Bakura off.

"He woke _me_ up from it!" Bakura shouted, livid over the fact that no one seemed to acknowledge the fact that it was the piano, not him, causing the disturbance. "Are you deaf? You couldn't hear that?"

Jounouchi blinked again, taken back by the rudeness— he walked the six flights to and from his home everyday for exercise instead of taking the elevator, so he never had the misfortune of meeting Youtai Bakura. He crossed his arms defiantly, and nearly rivaled Bakura's boss in terms of intimidation levels. "What the hell is wrong with _you_ is more like it. Bakura Ryou's a nice guy. He wouldn't do stuff like that on purpose."

That pissed him off more.

Ryou bowed his head politely to the compliment. "You may return to bed if you wish," he said to the innocent bystander of the situation. "Thank you for your help."

Jounouchi shrugged. "As long as the shouting stops." He went back inside and closed his door behind him, leaving the two snowy-haired males alone in the hallway once again.

Bakura faced Ryou again. "You think you've won?" he snapped, pointing an accusing finger at the man.

Ryou clicked his tongue with a look of disdain. "Yes, actually."

"Well, you're wrong!" Bakura yelled, waving his arms about angrily for emphasis. "I'm fucking warning you, you liste— play, _whatever the fuck it is_ you're doing— this early in the morning one more time, and I'm gonna get you fucking thrown out of here."

Ryou sneered at the man. "And say I were to complain that there was a man smoking in the elevators—who do you think will be left homeless first? Me," he continued innocently, placing a gloved hand over his chest mockingly, "or you, the one endangering the lives of fellow passengers every time they were to go up and down the building?"

Bakura barked out a dry laugh. "You _do_ have guts..." His lips twisted into a pained smile despite himself. He pointed an index finger menacingly at Ryou. "Just you fucking wait, _Bakura Ryou_..." He grinned madly at the Ryou's slight frown at his knowing the thinner man's name. "Yeah, _I know who you are_. I'm gonna make this place _hell_ for you."

Ryou smiled peculiarly at the threat, as if he doubted it. "We'll see," he said simply. Then he scowled. "Now leave." He slammed the door shut, leaving a very flabbergasted Bakura standing in front of his closed door.

The little time that Bakura spent standing there eventually cleared his thoughts. What the hell had he been thinking? He had lost all his composure in the few minutes that he had spent talking with this Bakura Ryou. That has never happened before; even Yuugi's insane drabbles could not compare to the thrill he had felt in that one conversation alone.

He wasn't willing to make him leave... That would ruin everything that he had been doing so far. No, he just wanted to torture him a little, and wipe that ever present leer off that highfalutin face.

That meant that he would make life difficult for this Bakura Ryou. Very difficult indeed.

As Youtai Bakura made his way up to his own apartment upstairs, he vowed that he would refrain from losing his self-control in front of Bakura Ryou again. That was giving the bastard way too much satisfaction.

He had said that he would make the man's life 'hell.' Easily said, but not so easily done, Bakura thought to himself as he walked up the flight of stairs.

He paused in mid-step.

There _was_ something he could do. Bakura was sure that Ryou had to be hiding something, or at least had one fact he wouldn't be comfortable with people knowing. A little more observation would be needed to pinpoint exactly what that would be, but so be it. He prided himself on being stubborn. And when that little secret became exposed into the sunlight, Bakura would make sure to use it to knock the arrogant little bastard down a couple of notches.

Smirking to himself at the grand idea, Bakura jauntily jogged up the rest of the steps.

No one ever said he couldn't be a jackass either. It took one to know one, after all.

* * *

**Author's Note: **I hope the first chapter was enjoyable!

The line "That Yuugi. What a dreamer." is borrowed from a book I read a long time ago referring to a girl's grandfather: Millicent Min, Girl Genius by Lisa Yee. The line "he just wanted to torture him a little" is based off Little Kuriboh's/ CardGamesFTW's **Yugioh! The Abridged Series**, from Marik to Yuugi.

I tried to place this storyline as close as possible to the **Yugioh!** series; in particular, I've tried to incorporate facts from the original series (before all the card playing came into…well, play— though there will be some of that, too). Hahahaha… the reason why I've done this is because I have copies of the original **Yugioh!** manga in my possession… Well, in this chapter, I made note that Ryou and Bakura live in an apartment building that is exactly fourteen stories tall, and that Ryou lives in 601. You can check the facts yourself in volume 6, which is when Ryou makes his first appearance.


	2. Doodle

On an average day, if Youtai Bakura had only managed to scrape together three hours of sleep, there would be hell to pay on his neighbors' and coworkers' part. For that reason, his neighbors tended to avoid him when he stormed through the apartment building… But then, they tended to avoid him in general, too.

Yuugi was usually a tougher nut to crack; it seemed that any ill will would get punctured by that bright spiky hair of his. Maybe that was why he was the only guy willing to work with Bakura on a daily basis.

Hmm, yes, there was definitely logic behind that.

This time, though, no neighbor or coworker needed to fear any incoming explosion from the tall, wiry man; Bakura was thoroughly enlivened by his new mission, and was not thwarted in the slightest by the latest upset in his sleep cycle.

His excitement-induced rush lasted through the morning and even on his way to work. There, Yuugi informed him that the designs they had completed earlier that day were passed, albeit grudgingly, by one ever-disgruntled Kaiba Seto. Yuugi also cheerfully mentioned that they were to start character designs for the newest game today.

Bakura gave him a glance out of his peripheral vision and slumped down on his chair in front of his computer as Yuugi began to prattle on about the plotline of the game from a stack of papers in his hands that he had received from the Supreme Ruler himself. Half-heartedly listening to his work partner with a couple of grunts and 'hmm's' every once in a while at appropriate timings, Bakura began to doodle on a piece of paper.

This was generally how the routine went; as Yuugi reads out loud the plans for the first time, Bakura would begin character sketches based on the descriptions read aloud, with some of his own views thrown in for good measure. Afterwards, Yuugi would add some of his own thoughts, and somehow they would make a compromise. The compromise usually could not occur until it was awfully close to deadline, but at least there _was_ compromise made.

It appeared that the new game that Kaiba envisioned centered on a teenager who somehow stumbled upon some magic artifact that allegedly later grants him magical powers, one of which was an alter ego.

Bakura rolled his eyes at this. As if there weren't already enough of those plots running around... Who believed in that kind of crap anyway?

Supposedly, the main character was this good natured high school boy, whereas the spirit was some eviler entity who possessed him when the occasion called for it. Apparently, this generally happened in times when a villain would somehow do ill onto the main character and his plethora of friends, in which then the spirit would use games, of all things, to defeat them.

Right, like a six-sided die or a stack of playing cards could _really _help anyone.

To make it even more blown out of proportion, there were more of these Millennium Items, as they turned out to be called, in the possession of other saps. So far, Kaiba only had the layouts for three, two wielded by some Egyptian dude and one by another high school student, the latter of whom—here was the best part—also had an alter ego, though this one, in Bakura's opinion, was nothing but a completely off-rocker kleptomaniac.

"Kaiba's stories are getting lamer as they go along," Bakura cut in with a bored tone as he continued sketching. Yuugi stopped his reading, and looked up at him.

"Really? I thought that sounded pretty interesting," Yuugi admitted, looking intently at the stack of papers he was holding. Bakura rolled his eyes. "Hmm, I might bring that up to him next time," he said thoughtfully. Then he perked up. "So, what did you draw so far?"

"Hnn?" Bakura blinked. He looked down on his paper. "Shit!" he swore, looking in horror at his picture.

"What? What happened?" Yuugi asked in a panicked voice, wide purple eyes becoming even wider. He got up from his seat anxiously and headed towards Bakura's chair.

"None of your business," Bakura snapped, tearing the paper away from Yuugi's incoming grasp.

"Let me _see_!" Yuugi demanded. With one swift movement, the short, cherubic-faced man tackled his much more imposing demented-looking co-worker, successfully able to snatch the paper away. Sitting back down on his own swiveling chair, his triumphant babyish face turned to a look of utter confusion as his eyes scanned the picture. "...Who is this?"

"Shit, Mutou! What the _fuck_?" Bakura screamed angrily, moving to get his sketch back, but missing as Yuugi quickly rolled his chair away from him. "It's no one! Give it back, you _fucking asshole_!"

Yuugi ignored the obscenities being hurled over to him, concentrating on the picture studiously. He had probably long since gotten used to his colleague's over-the-top dramatics. "Oh!" Yuugi's eyes suddenly lit up, as if in recognition. "I know what this is!"

"I said it's n— Wait. What do_ you _know?" How could Yuugi possibly know who—

"Is this your version of the main character using yourself as the dark half?" Yuugi asked, smile wide and amethyst eyes round and sparkling.

"_What_? What the hell are you trying to imply?" Bakura began to shout, rather insulted that Yuugi considered _him_ the "evil entity". The white-haired man paused in mid-tantrum, though, and recovered. Lies were always the best solution when he was facing Yuugi. "Yes. Yes, it _is_," he managed through clenched teeth.

"It's so _super special awesome_, Youtai-kun!" Yuugi gushed, impressed by the artwork. Bakura took a second to wince at the man's insistent catchphrase to describe _everything_ he liked. "It looks so similar to you! You want to send this one in to Kaiba right now? I agree to this draft one hundred percent!"

"No!" Bakura bellowed forcefully. "Are you fucking _crazy_?"

"But _why not_?" his twenty-four year old colleague whined, like a _baby_, if Bakura might add.

"Damn it, Mutou, I said 'no' and that's the end of it!" He grabbed the picture away, and stuffed it into his bag. "Think of something else to fucking work on." He tried to remember the other things Yuugi had been talking about. "How about the Items? We should make those first, and base the character designs off of them," he suggested slyly.

"Oh!" Yuugi's eyes lighted up again. "I was thinking that maybe we should model the Items after _actual_ ancient Egyptian artifacts! Oh! We should make the Millennium Puzzle look like an inverted pyramid— you know, like the ones you see in the books..."

Bakura exhaled slowly under his breath, satisfied that his plan to distract his meddlesome partner had worked.

* * *

After another plead that Bakura really ought to just use the picture he had drawn earlier that day, a flat refusal and threats of bodily harm that will permanently disfigure a certain person's small frame, and finally a mutual agreement that the two of them would mull over the design over night, Bakura was able to make his way home.

As Bakura got on his train, he sighed and rubbed his temples with his fingers in an attempt to relax his headache away. As he gave a loud groan, the middle aged woman who had been sitting in the seat next to him scooted a little further away, eyes darting back and forth towards his direction. Bakura ignored her and pulled on his hair in frustration, deep in his thoughts:

Even after spending the rest of the day going over character designs with Yuugi, they were unable to think of a suitable sketch for the main character, though the supporting roles and villains came easily enough.

Peeking at the worn messenger bag on his lap, he scowled and opened it. Taking out the paper he had tried so hard to take away from Yuugi, Bakura hit the back of his head against the plastic seat multiple times, and groaned inwardly.

He had fucking drawn Bakura Ryou.

How the hell did that happen, the man still couldn't fathom. There must have been some rogue thoughts heading toward the section reserved for the scathing man somewhere in his head, for Bakura really could not bridge the gap on his own.

'A good natured boy whereas the spirit was some eviler entity that possessed him when the occasion called for it,' Yuugi had described. Now how did he manage to get _this_ out of that description? Maybe those three hours of sleep had started to catch up to him...

No. Wait. Bakura looked closer at the picture he had drawn. The 'good natured boy'— Ryou to other people. Well, technically Ryou was a man, and in his early twenties it seemed, but there you go. Either way: the person who seriously needed an attitude fix—Ryou to him. It made sense, Bakura supposed, especially since he had been thinking about Ryou from as soon as he left the apartment all the way to work.

Was _that_ what he had been thinking? It was a weak link, but there it was. Bakura thanked whatever gods were up there that magic didn't exist in real life, or he seriously would have contemplated using the Ryou-has-an-evil-spirit-controlling-him speculation to explain the caustic man's odd behavior towards him.

'Well that's fucking useless,' Bakura growled to himself. Yet he could not bring himself to throw the paper out, or even stuff it haphazardly back into his bag. He even regretted slightly ruffling the paper when he had forced the sketch into his bag back at work. To compensate, the man smoothed out the wrinkles at the edges of the paper.

Bakura then turned the sketch at a few angles to the right and left. He had to admit, he had _outdone _himself when he made this drawing, he thought smugly to himself.

It was a three-quarter view of the man facing down yet with his eyes cast towards the viewer. He was especially proud of the accuracy of the face shape; the picture bore a strong resemblance to the almost too-sharp contours of Ryou's own jaw line.

Bakura frowned, though, at the eyes. There was something off about them that he could not quite place. Perhaps it was because he had colored them too dark, and the result was that it looked as if Ryou had pupil-less eyes. Now _that_ certainly made it look like he was possessed...or dead.

Damn. That ruined the picture.

He blamed it on Ryou.

Stopping his observation in mid-turn, he realized what he was doing, and scowled deeply to himself. Flipping the paper over before placing it carefully in a folder and sliding the plastic item slowly back into his bag, the man clapped his forehead onto his palms and rested his elbows over his knees.

He seriously needed a smoke.

By the time Bakura sauntered back to Ginmaru Apartments, it was nearing seven o'clock. He pushed open the glass doors into the building, stifling a yawn as he did so. The yawn was cut short though, when he recognized who the black-coated individual beside the mailboxes was.

Bakura watched from a distance as Ryou did his customary routine of quickly shuffling through his mail. There was a young woman standing nearby him with a child in tow, going through her own letters. The young child was running about with a model airplane, making sound effects to go with the toy's flight. Bakura recognized the pair; they lived a few doors down.

As usual, there was nothing interesting to report about the content of the post, and Bakura was about to continue on his way when he saw Ryou turning to leave to apparently to go back to his apartment.

However, what happened next certainly took him by surprise: The boy accidentally knocked into Ryou's side while attempting an especially extravagant dive with the plane, and Ryou jerked back as if he had been very badly electrocuted. Bakura kept his eyes on the suddenly extremely pale man's face as the shaken man dropped all his letters onto the floor and quickly took several steps back away from the mother and child.

The woman apologized profusely for her son's stumble, and picked the letters up for the color-drained man, who took them hesitantly with a trembling, gloved hand. Ryou was shaking his head, trying to smile and reassure the woman that he was fine, but his breathing appeared labored, and he had taken the next possible second to turn his heel and walk briskly, albeit shaken-footed, away into the opening elevator.

Bakura grinned.

* * *

Bakura was in content spirits at work the next day.

Not only had the piano playing in the "wee hours of the morning" ceased, Bakura was certain that he now had substantial enough evidence to make Ryou a little more that a bit "uncomfortable." To confirm his theory, he had gone down to the sixth floor to pay Bakura Ryou a little visit before going off to work. He unexpectedly bumped into Ryou, and not only in the figurative sense. The man was once again dressed as if Domino City was going to freeze over in the next few hours, and had his ever-present briefcase with him:

He was getting off the elevator just as Ryou was about to get on, and the reaction that Ryou displayed at the impact their shoulders made was certainly not disappointing. As expected, Ryou jumped back from Bakura, the latter of who gave an uncharacteristic smile. "Going to work, Bakura Ryou?"

"As a matter of fact, yes, I am, _Youtai Bakura_," Ryou said stiffly, adding venom-like emphasis on the man's name.

"Oh, did your digging already, I see," Bakura sneered. "I noticed that you weren't playing your music at six this morning," he added smoothly.

"Did you? How observant of you," Ryou snapped, clearly uninterested in conversation.

"Hey, what's your job anyway?" Bakura asked, motioning to the slim black briefcase with a nod of his head.

"Why do you need to know?" the questioned man fired back.

Bakura shrugged nonchalantly. "Just wondering. The faster you answer all my questions, the sooner you get to leave."

"I'm a piano teacher," Ryou gritted out. "I obviously put my sheet music in here," he spat out with a jerk of his briefcase.

"Ohh," Bakura cooed sarcastically. "Fancy." Ryou simply rolled his eyes, and tried to move around the obnoxious man, who stood in the middle of the elevator entrance.

"Excuse me," he said loudly.

"Not excused yet," Bakura quipped. He leaned against one side of the frame of the doors, blocking them from closing. "I have a couple more questions."

Ryou narrowed his eyes, and pulled back the sleeve of his black coat with a customary gloved hand to reveal a thin silver watch. He scowled. "At least step away from the doors first. You're blocking the people on the lower floors from using the elevators if you stand there."

"Am I?" Bakura asked innocently. He examined his fingernails in a mocking manner. "Hmm, no, I'm quite comfortable here." He looked up lazily. "If you have a problem with it, which seems like the case with everything about me, why don't you come over here and move me out of the way, then?"

Ryou blanched to a paler shade at that statement, and took a step back. His even more unusual pasty skin returned to its usual color of off-peach, though, when he narrowed his eyes again. "I don't have time for this," he snapped. Bakura noticed with interest that Ryou was continuing to backpedal steadily away from the elevator. "I have to go."

"But you haven't even answered my questions yet— _Hey_!" Ryou had already disappeared past the exit to the nearest stairwell.

Bakura smiled to himself. "Never mind, Ryou. I already have all I need to know!" he called out to the vanished figure.

The information he had managed to salvage together the night before in that one scene in the lobby added with the confrontation with him earlier today had made him quite pleased with himself. Even Yuugi couldn't ruin his good mood now.

As he began sketching the Millenium Ring, one of the Items that that one of the antagonists was supposed to be the owner of, his thoughts drifted off to that of his neighbor. The man sneered inwardly.

"So you don't like being touched, eh?" the man murmured aloud. He chuckled darkly, darkening the spikes of the Ring in his sketch. "Just you wait, Bakura Ryou. I'll use that to bite you in your ass very soon...Just you fucking _wait_..." He broke his pencil tip at that last utterance by pressing too forcibly on the paper. "Shit."

"_Youtai-kun_...!" Yuugi greeted cheerfully as he skipped towards him, a sheet of paper flapping in the wind as he waved his short arm over his head. Bakura winced at the drawn out enunciation of the suffix Yuugi was quite firm on attaching to his last name, and looked up from his broken pencil.

"What _now_, Mutou?" he snarled. Why did he always show up when he was busy?

"Well, I went home last night thinking about that drawing you made, and I made up one myself! What do you think?" the bubbly man asked as he thrust the paper into Bakura's face.

Bakura pushed Yuugi's arms back out of his personal space, and took the picture with an expression of suspicion.

"I modeled it after myself, but with the _picture_ as my 'dark side,'" the effervescent young man explained proudly with air quotes over his last two words. "I call him '_Yami Yuugi_!'"

Sure enough, there was a definite resemblance to his pointy-haired work partner. His eyes were shaped different, though— much more sharp and narrow. He had an even more extravagant hairstyle than that of Yuugi, with more of those jagged blond spikes blown back at the magenta-tipped black hair. He appeared to be dressed in leather, something that Bakura could not, and would _rather_ not, picture on his actual colleague.

"Look, I even added the Millenium Puzzle on him!" Yuugi continued excitedly, jabbing a small finger at the drawing. "Cool, right?"

Bakura nodded along, just to entertain him. "Hnn. Is he taller than you?" he asked as he tossed the paper back to his coworker.

Yuugi caught it with deft hands and shrugged sheepishly. "Well, yeah...A little bit," he gestured with his index finger and thumb a centimeter away from each other.

"A little more than _that, _I would think," the white haired man grunted.

"Hey, I'm not short; I'm _fun-sized_, remember?" the man joked good-naturedly.

"Right. Drawing's good, Mutou," Bakura muttered, digging around his desk for a pencil and going back to his sketch of the Millennium Ring, his thoughts already beginning to drift off.

"You really think so?" Yuugi asked, taken back by Bakura's lack of insults to be launched at him. "It's not too extreme?" he pondered to himself, examining the picture closely.

Bakura had already tuned Yuugi out. "'Why the hell would you think that?" he asked in a bored tone. That sounded like the right answer. He waved a hand in a brushing motion in Yuugi's direction. "It's nice. Whatever. Send it in to Kaiba."

"What? Really?" Yuugi's eyes widened. "You think Kaiba-kun'll pass it?"

"Yeah, yeah. Now go away."

"Alright then, Youtai-kun! I'll give it to him right now!" The vivacious young man bounced away joyfully.

Bakura looked up from his sketch and looked around for Yuugi, who had now disappeared. "Wait. What the hell just happened?"

* * *

Bakura made his way to a nearby internet café after work. Pushing his way through several preppy-looking teenage girls with extremely short uniform skirts, and even more rather creepy-looking young men with their noses in their little handheld gaming devices, he managed to locate an unused computer near the corner of the place. Settling himself down onto an empty seat and heaving his bag off his shoulder and onto the floor beside him, he cracked his knuckles before opening the search engine.

The man usually had little interest in issues that did not immediately concern him, but this was a special case. He would have done his search elsewhere, but his laptop was suffering major damage after an all-nighter; he had fell asleep and accidentally knocked his can of beer over the keyboard. His cell phone was too old to carry out any functions other than the basic incoming and outgoing calls, as well as the task as his morning alarm clock. Trying to use his computer in Kaiba Corp was unthinkable. Bakura had high qualms that his supervisor wired everything his employees did on their work computers into some mother load of a file somewhere. That man seriously needed to get a life.

Mordant opinions of his boss aside, Bakura drummed his fingers impatiently as he waited for the window to open. When it finally did, he quickly typed in a phrase and pressed 'enter.' He was instantly accessed to over thirty thousand hits of his search. Clicking on one of them, Bakura read the title of the page out loud in his head.

"Well, look at what we have here," Bakura muttered to no one in the buzzing café. Scanning over the definition and symptoms of the apparently rare irrational fear, a gruesome smile formed on the man's face.

"Oh, will you _look. At. That_..." he murmured, making soft clucking sounds with his tongue as he shook his head slowly. "I've got you now, Bakura Ryou..." Taking out a handy piece of paper from his folder, Bakura jotted some notes down, his twisted leer widening as he did so. When he was finished, the man slid the paper back into his folder and then the file into his bag.

Terminating the search on the computer, Bakura slung his bag over his shoulder and made his leave without another word.

* * *

As Bakura walked back out into the brisk night air, he took a deep inhale of the biting chilly air into his lungs. It came up short, though, and the man had to hold onto the wall of a building close by to as he coughed violently.

Clearing his throat a bit, the man thumped a bony fist against his chest as he straightened his posture.

The seasonly coughing came around at spring time nearly every year. He supposed it might be triggered from the smoking, but the man wasn't quite willing to kick the habit. Maybe a beer would help. He noticed a convenience store nearby, and was about to go over to it, until another cough that threatened to heave a lung out made him think otherwise.

Whatever. He could get one when he got home.

Bakura sauntered down the steps to the train station, hands jammed in his thin windbreaker as he quickly made his way down. He continued to let out short little wheezes as he paid his fare and up to when he entered the platform.

Slightly annoyed by the amount of people waiting for the train, he shoved his way through several people before stopping near the edge, coughing throughout.

He stuck his head out to see whether the train was about to arrive yet, hacking into a fist as he did so. A sudden hand on his shoulder almost made him lose his balance, and he let out a yell as he grabbed onto the low wall that ran along at the edge of the platform.

He whirled around, and was surprised to see that the person who had been trying to get his attention was no other than that neighbor Ju...no, Jounouchi.

"Whoa! You alright?" the gangly blond asked.

"What the hell was that for?" Bakura snarled. "You almost scared the shit out of me, fucking idiot!" He straightened, stepping back a bit to face the disheveled man.

Jounouchi rolled his eyes. "I was going to offer you some water 'cause of all your coughing." He dug into a grocery bag he was holding and held out a plastic bottle.

Bakura eyed it warily, but took it. "You just give random strangers water when they're coughing a little?"

Jounouchi snorted. "Seemed more like you were about to choke up some blood, too." He grinned. "Besides, I remember you. I see you around all the time in the building. I think you live above Bakura's place, right?"

Bakura grunted an affirmative as he guzzled down the water. "So?" he snapped as he screwed the lid back onto the bottle.

Jounouchi shrugged off Bakura's rudeness with a shake of his head. "Anyway, I'm Jounouchi Katsuya. I just wanted to sorta restart on a better foot, you know, since I was being pretty rude and didn't get to introduce myself last time. " He held out a hand to shake.

"Youtai Bakura," the white-haired male said simply, returning the shake hesitantly.

"Hey! You have the same name as Bakura Ryou!" the tall man exclaimed.

"No shit," Bakura grumbled. "And for your information, 'Bakura' is _my_ first name. It's that _bastard_'s last."

The two boarded the train that just arrived before either spoke up again.

Jounouchi sat down on an empty seat and gathered his many bags beside his legs. Bakura hesitantly took the seat next to him. "What gives between you two anyway?" he asked as Bakura pushed his bag onto the seat on the other side of him and slouched a bit.

Bakura paused. "I don't know. He hated me as soon as we met." He decided not to mention his following on-purpose attempts to enrage the sickly looking man to his new acquaintance.

Jounouchi frowned at the surprising piece of information. "Huh. Wow. That's pretty weird." He said nothing else about the matter and there was a long silence as the train ran on its tracks with a steady, mechanical beat.

Bakura's thoughts consciously began to drift off to those of their resident Dr. Jekyll. Maybe this guy could enlighten him of a few facts about how he became Mr. Hyde.

"You moved into Craptastic Ginmaru Apartments recently?" That was a safe enough conversation-opener. Bakura supposed that logically such a question made little sense, but in fact it just simply proved exactly how out-of-tune he was to his neighbors.

"Eh? Oh, no, not really. Since like six years back, actually. Had to get away from my old man." Jounouchi shrugged. "It's not that bad here, anyway."

Bakura snorted. "You must have lived in some hellhole if you think you're living in a nice place now." He took another drink of water as he felt another wave of coughs threatening to surface.

In truth, the apartment building was not all that bad. Bakura just deemed it as 'craptastic' because of his own biases.

Jounouchi shrugged again. "It's nice compared to the old place." There was a long awkward pause. He suddenly seemed very preoccupied with a rip in his worn tee-shirt.

Bakura felt the discomfort radiating from his new found companion, and hastily switched the subject. "So you like it here? Neighbors don't bother you or anything?"

That was a bad attempt to fish for information, even to Bakura, especially since he, himself, should have been considered as Public Enemy A.

"Nah. People are pretty quiet over here for the most part." Jounouchi grinned wryly. "'Cept for the time when you came at Bakura like a banshee though." He chuckled. "That was pretty funny."

"I'm glad you were amused," Bakura muttered dryly. "He was playing his fucking piano at six in the morning", he added lamely, as if that made up for it.

"Yeah, he's a piano teacher," Jounouchi nodded along, scratching the back of his head. "I really didn't hear him playing that time." He shrugged his shoulders. "Slept through louder disturbances than music, I guess. The guy's really good at it, you know, the piano. That's what makes him a teacher, right?"

"He told you that he's a piano teacher?" Bakura couldn't help but feel a tad unnerved that he had to squeeze such information out of the sickly man, whereas Jounouchi was probably told that without even being prompted.

"Huh? Yeah, yeah he did. Works on the third floor of that real expensive prep school building up at Akechi Plaza. Satou Prep, I think."

Bakura quickly filed that fact into the recesses of his mind designated to Bakura Ryou. Satou Prep School was one of those extremely expensive schools that anxious parents sent their children to cram them for whatever citywide and nationwide tests were coming up. It doubled as an extracurricular program where already busy students could also learn music and sports, both of which also looked good in applications to top schools.

He walked over there sometimes, when he had nothing better to do than intimidate those wispy, nerdy students. "Hm. He should be making a bundle if he works at _that_ place..." he muttered.

The thought _'Why the hell would he be living in a shit hole like this?'_ streamed through his mind.

"_We are now arriving at Ginmaru Station_," the female electronic voice announced over the speakers.

Bakura was too immersed in his thoughts to hear the broadcast, and it took a shake from Jounouchi to break him free of the mysteries swimming in his head. "Hey, this is our stop, Youtai," Jounouchi said loudly.

Bakura blinked, and shook his head wildly as if to clear his mind. The two men got up and gathered their belongings about them. There was another long silence as the two ascended the stairs leading directly up the surface and greeted the crisp air.

"Going directly home now?" Jounouchi asked, gesturing his head to their building about a block away from where they currently stood.

"Yeah. Gotta lot of stuff to do when I get back," Bakura muttered vaguely.

"Alright, then," Jounouchi nodded. "I have a few more stuff to buy for dinner tonight, so I guess I'll see ya around."

At that moment, Jounouchi's cell phone rang, and the blond man gave a toothy grin as he picked up the call.

"Yeah? I'm still buying groceries, you ungrateful bastard." The blond laughed at the apparent reply his caller made. Then he frowned. "What the hell? You said you were coming over. What? A business meeting? Aw, come on...!" He sighed. "Fine. Next week." Then Jounouchi looked up at Bakura, and quickly waved goodbye to the wiry, tousled-haired man now deep in thought once again.

"Yeah, later," Bakura waved a dismissive hand back, and began his walk back to the apartment building.

Bakura Ryou was not in the lobby when he entered. As Bakura flipped open his lighter to light another cigarette, he mulled over the new details he had managed to amass in the recent conversation with Jounouchi.

"Who the hell are you, Bakura Ryou...?" Bakura muttered out loud. The cloud of gray smoke that spewed from his lips swirled around in the confines of elevator as he rode up to his floor.

Bakura opened the door to his apartment and stepped in, dropping his jacket onto the arm of the couch before sitting on one of the well worn seat cushions. Exhaling deeply, he pulled out the paper on which he had copied the results of his search from his bag as he sat hunched at the edge of his seat.

He grinned, biting the cigarette's length with his teeth as his eyes perused through the information once more.

Now all he needed was to set his plan in motion.

...And how was he to do that? The smile became a line, and then into a frown.

He had the ammunition now...but what was the battle plan? What would be the best way to wound the idiosyncratic man and push him to the brink with the valuable knowledge that he had at his disposal?

How the hell does someone get at a man with _that_ type of phobia?

Unfortunately, it couldn't be anything too physical, or namely, aggressive. Anything too confrontational was sure to get him into extremely deep trouble, either with Old Man Tachibana—the landlord of his building, or with Domino's Finest. Or both.

He didn't love his home in Ginmaru Apartments, but he certainly liked it better than a cardboard box or prison, one of which he was sure to end up in if he laid a single finger past "friendly touching" on the man.

_Shit._

He tossed the paper onto the glass table, leaning back with a loud angry exhale.

Was all that work for nothing? All the staking out and clue-collecting?

Wait. This could work to his advantage, this half-and-half whole skirting-with-the-law thing. Bakura sat up straight once more, grabbing the paper again.

A fist in Ryou's face would be sure to give him Tachibana's firm boot-print on his ass while being hurled out the front doors, but something like an innocent graze by his arm certainly won't. Besides, he would never consider the former.

He may be brash, but he wasn't an idiot.

He would plan his actions in public, where Ryou was sure not to bite his head off for it. And how would the man be able to complain? It would be impossible to arrest Bakura for assault for a simple clap on the shoulder.

Even continuous touches wouldn't be a liable claim to get him in trouble. He had a strong feeling that Ryou would not speak up about anything that would expose his apparent fear, especially since that would mean that he would be giving into Bakura.

The smirk resurfaced. He was going to win.

* * *

When his cell phone's alarm clock rang the next morning, Bakura did not jam the 'snooze' button multiple times, like he would have done generally. Instead, he swiftly pulled the covers away and got up off of his futon immediately to turn the phone off. Running a hand through his tangled mess of hair, he grabbed for his clothes and dressed quickly.

Today was going to be a very eventful day. He needed to be there front and center for his neighbor, after all.

Strolling into the elevator, he leaned against a side, drumming fingernails slowly against the chrome finish of the wall on the way down.

Sauntering out at the lobby floor, he headed directly to the mailboxes, where Ryou Bakura stood. The man had his head down, and had in his hands a small pile of mail again. What was most important, though, was the tiny crowd of neighbors also there checking their post.

"'Morning," Bakura said smoothly to his neighbor, placing a hand on his shoulder from behind to get his attention. He grinned as Ryou immediately snapped his head up, and jerked away from the touch.

Unfortunately, Ryou didn't drop any of his letters this time, though that would have been quite amusing. Instead, his widened eyes became narrow as he recognized who had greeted him, and immediately stepped back a step and faced Bakura's smile.

"What do you want now?" Ryou hissed, low enough so that no one else was able to hear him.

"What do you mean, Ryou?" Bakura asked innocently, purposely calling him by first name. "Is it against the law or something to say 'good morning' to someone all of a sudden?"

He reached out as if to touch Ryou again, forcing the man to walk backwards into the mailboxes. Ryou winced as the back of his head hit a steel box behind him.

Bakura snickered and brushed a few fingers against Ryou's scarf-wrapped neck. "You alright there?" Seeing Ryou's color drained face freeze at the touch, he decided he would go farther, and even managed to pull at the scarf lightly, just enough for his fingernails to scrath against the man's neck_—_

Ryou's eyes became absolutely murderous at the contact, and he shoved Bakura away from him with an enraged cry.

Looking as if he was going to at least throw his briefcase, Ryou was stopped as a nearby elderly man stepped between them to ask if the two were alright.

Ryou glanced at the man, and then back at Bakura, who grinned at him. "Fine," he managed. "We're fine here." A hand clenched his bag closely though, as if he truly was still thinking about taking a swing, audience there or not.

"Yeah," Bakura drawled. "Just two friends having a little fun, right, Ryou?" The man certainly didn't look like he believed them, but hesitantly nodded and walked away.

Ryou's frame slumped. Though no longer threatening to hit Bakura, he certainly still looked far from his general well-poised demeanor. His skin had turned nearly frightening shade of white, and was trembling quite violently. Leaning against the wall for support, it looked like the man would collapse any moment.

Bakura grinned. "All that from a couple of touches, Ryou?" he taunted lowly, leaning close. Ryou continued to gasp for breath, but finally tightened his scarf around his neck and ran off, not once looking back at the self-satisfied man.

Bakura rubbed the few fingers that had managed to touch Ryou's neck over themselves. They had turned strangely warm.

* * *

**Author's Note: **Yuugi's "That's so super special awesome!" compliment is from Little Kuriboh's **Yugioh! The Abridged Series**. His "I'm not short, I'm fun sized" is from a profile picture of one of the fan fiction readers/writers on this site.

Are you readers aware that the story plan that Yuugi was explaining to Bakura the storyline of the original 'Yugioh!'? There was the continuous mentions of the Millennium Items and all of that... Even Yami Yuugi gets a brief cameo!


	3. Glove

In Kaiba Corp, Bakura was once again thinking about a certain sickly-looking white haired man when he was supposed to be doing work. He absentmindedly dragged another line around the frame of the Millennium Puzzle with his mouse, his other hand propping his head up.

It seemed that the violent reactions to touch applied only to him. Whenever Ryou was accidentally brushed against by another, he would only flinch, and at most edge away.

Hmm. It was specifically when Ryou knew that it was _Bakura_ invading personal bubbles that he became aggressive. What the hell did Bakura do to deserve harsh shoves and possible projectiles being flown his way? All he ever did was smoke in the elevator.

And about Ryou's job. It made little sense for Ryou to be living in such an ordinary place when he could definitely afford to live so much more comfortably. It'll certainly never be Kaiba Manor status, but certainly Ryou could afford guaranteed hot water in the morning shower.

Well, perhaps the reason Bakura's own apartment was not guaranteed the same thing was because he sometimes neglected to pay his bills, but that was hardly important right now.

A high-pitched voice scattered his thoughts. "Youtai-kun!" Yuugi was waving a hand in front of Bakura's glazed over eyes. "Youtai-kun...!"

Bakura blinked. "What?" he snapped.

"I just wanted to tell you that I didn't get to give Kaiba-kun the sketch yesterday. He had to go to some big corporate meeting with some American guy last night." He cupped a hand over the side of his mouth as he whispered his next words. "I don't think it went very well, though. Apparently Kaiba-kun had to miss some personal outing to go, and that _really_ pissed him off."

As if on cue, the two heard Kaiba's voice thunder through the halls. "You tell that fucking Keith Howard if I have to hear him say 'In America!' after every fucking sentence _one more fucking time_, I'll kick him off this damn building's roof with one well-placed foot on that bastard's ass!"

"But Kaiba-sama...!" one of his assistants protested weakly. "Think of the lawsuits...!"

"_Screw_ the lawsuits; I have money!" Kaiba roared. Then the footsteps disappeared. Bakura rolled his eyes. Talk about being overdramatic.

Yuugi peered over his desk and shook his head sympathetically. "Poor Kaiba-kun." He paused. "I guess I'll try giving it to him later today."

Bakura still had no idea what Yuugi was going on about, and simply grunted in reply. Then a question came into mind.

Maybe Yuugi could help him solve this mystery.

"Mutou. You know Satou Prep School up at Akechi Plaza?"

Yuugi looked up from his own computer. "Satou Prep? Yeah, that's where Kaiba-kun's brother goes to learn music, I think."

"Good. Alright, say that there's a situation where someone works there. They'll be making a nice paycheck with that, right?"

Yuugi's eyes suddenly began to water. He abruptly got up from his seat, and lunged over to Bakura. "What the fuck, Mutou—?" Bakura snarled, pushing Yuugi's small frame away from his chest.

"Youtai-kun! Don't tell me you're quitting here! No!" he began to bawl, causing a rather embarrassing scene. "We'll miss you too much!"

"Shit, Mutou! Calm the fuck down!" Bakura hissed. "I'm not quitting, you idiot!"

Yuugi's eyes immediately dried, and a moment later, it didn't even look like he had been crying. "You're not?"

"No!" Bakura said sharply. "I'm talking about someone else!" Maybe it was a bad idea to get Yuugi's input on this. "Now listen to me, damn you. As I was fucking _saying_, if someone worked there, they'll make a lot. Right?"

Yuugi scratched his chin in thought. "I guess," he said slowly.

"I'll take that as 'yes.' So, say that that same someone lived where I lived. They could definitely live somewhere better. Yes or no?"

"With our paycheck? Definetely yes," Yuugi said firmly with a nod.

Bakura rolled his eyes. "So you have any possible reasons why that someone might live where I live?"

"Well, I was watching this anime once and there was a similar situation!" Yuugi said brightly.

Bakura took a deep inhale and let out his breath quietly. It was worth a shot. "Fine."

"It turned out that this guy—who in this case would be the person working in the prep school you're talking about— won a million yen in a card game tournament, but then he spent it all on his little sister so that she could get eye surgery!"

"...A card game tournament?" Bakura sputtered. "For eye surgery?"

"Because she was going blind!" Yuugi said solemnly. "Isn't that the saddest thing ever?"

He should have known better than to ask Yuugi for help.

"...Forget I even asked, Mutou," Bakura said disgustedly. "Just forget it."

* * *

Utterly clueless over how to solve the rest of the mystery, Bakura was in a sour mood when he came home that Thursday night. Well, at least there was always a hot tempered man to bother in his building everyday.

That malicious thought lightening his spirits, Bakura grinned when he saw Ryou heading out of his car from a nearby street. Like his home, the vehicle was rather worn, and hardly seemed like the kind that a guy making private tutor money would drive.

Strolling over to Ryou, who just managed to shut the door behind him, he stopped directly behind him just as Ryou raised his head.

"Boo." He prodded the back of Ryou's coat.

Ryou whirled around with a startled jump, but his face immediately became sour when he saw Bakura. Clutching his briefcase, he tried to make his way around the man, with the leather case as a shield. Bakura easily allowed him to pass.

Yes. That had ended his day considerably well.

Soon, though, even Bakura began to tire of his regular Piss-Ryou-Off cycle he had seemed to come to possess as a week wore on. It was boring, and soon, even Ryou's twitching was no better than all the way in the beginning, when Bakura just spent time stalking— no, observing the man.

Bakura slumped on his couch now. He had just spent a few minutes wordlessly taunting Ryou by continuously bumping into him.

Even if Ryou didn't think it was annoying, the pedestrians nearby would undoubtedly think it was strange. Not like he cared much about what others thought, but soon there was even a nagging feeling inside his head that told him he was acting rather silly.

It was because he had to resort to using only random pats on the back here, or a graze over the arm there that had made it so. If he knew any better, he would say that the man was growing used to it or something...well, Ryou always seemed tense every time he walked in the building, at any rate.

That added with the load that there was no way he could dig up much dirt on the man— he worked in a _prep school _teaching_ piano_, for gods' sake.

He needed a bigger reaction. Ryou was quickly becoming no fun with those hurried escapes. True, he didn't tattle on him, but _come on_.

What counted as his favorite Ryou-Reaction anyway? Anything that involved violence on the sickly man's part was always freaking hilarious. Like the first time on the elevator. And also when he touched his neck... That's _right_.

Skin-to-skin contact... All this time, Bakura had just been poking him in his side, or slinging a hand over his shoulder. There was no information on skin-to-skin touching in the research he had done all those days ago, but the idea was certainly plausible.

Bakura picked up the discarded paper that has not been moved since he had taken it out last.

Yes, it was very possible. Symptoms like trembling and breathlessness he had noted. But he wondered how far he could go...

Hm. Perhaps this would be a good time to take a little break from work. He hasn't used any sick days the past year, probably because neither going to work nor being at home required too much thinking on his part.

Maybe he ought to spend a day visiting a certain prep school over at Akechi Plaza.

He grinned wryly and picked up his phone to call into work.

* * *

Bakura flipped his phone shut. The call didn't go that well, considering Yuugi _had_ to have happened to be there in the office when he called in to Kaiba's secretary.

After having to reassure the man that "No, Mutou, I'm just taking a few days off; I'm not quitting—Listen to me! I said I'm _not quitting_, you asshole!" quite loudly over the phone when Yuugi apparently grabbed the phone away from the probably extremely confused woman, the phone was given to the boss himself.

The boss who was not willing to spare him more than one day for the rest of his 'miserable time in Kaiba Corp.'

He was also threatened by the man that if the former wasn't back in work by then, he would be out of a job.

Bakura was pretty certain that the man was just exaggerating.

_Great_. Fine plan this was turning out to be.

Taking out his lighter for another cigarette, he glanced at the time. It was already about nine in the morning. He generally would have left for work right about now. He wasn't so surprised that Yuugi was already at Kaiba Corp. He was quite insistent with giving Kaiba some drawing or the other. What the hell was that all about?

He'll ask him when he gets back. Yuugi wasn't so crazy to do something completely ridiculous, after all.

He wasn't exactly sure when Ryou left for his work, though. It seemed rather odd of the man to carry his bag even when he just went down to the lobby to get his mail, only to go back upstairs again. But then, there were a lot of quirks about him.

Maybe he'll drop by to see Ryou in a few hours. Bakura stood up and stretched out his arms, unlit cigarette still between his fingers. He coughed in the middle of the yawn, and had to wheeze for a new breath of fresh air.

Perhaps he should lay off on the cigarettes for a while. He pushed the stick back into the pack with its equally deadly buddies.

First, a beer was in order.

* * *

Finding Ryou's place of work was easy enough. Jounouchi had even helpfully mentioned that the man worked on the third floor. Hopefully, getting in would be as simple.

As expected, it was a rather classy looking building. It seemed like everything in it was of a similar stature as well: Sharp in more ways than one, from the pristine nature of the large marble floor tiles to the security guard's bizarre hairdo.

Speaking of which, said security guy at the front desk was staring right at him as he walked in by the glass doors, but Bakura couldn't be too sure with those huge shades the man was wearing.

'Kemo,' his name plate shone, with an air of authority.

What a ridiculous name and an even more ridiculous hairstyle, Bakura thought to himself. It rivaled the one of the janitor, Honda Hiroto, in his apartment building.

"Hey, you!" Kemo shouted. "You can't come in here. This is private property!"

_Shit_. Perhaps it would have been a good idea to dress up a bit more nicely than his general uniform of work boots and torn jeans, or the 'Hobo-Outfit,' as Yuugi affectionately called it.

"I have perfectly good reason to be here," Bakura snapped back, a bit falteringly. '_Damn it_. Wasn't expecting this...'

Kemo crossed his arms menacingly, looming over the other man. "It had better be a damn good reason then."

"I'm here to drop something off for one of the people here," Bakura fibbed. "He works on the third floor."

_Shit, that was a bad lie_. He wasn't even carrying any bags with him.

"Oh yeah?" Kemo asked suspiciously.

_Shit shit shit shit shit_. This wasn't going to end well.

Kemo cracked his knuckled theatrically.

Bakura was hauled out of the building by his collar faster than he could say '_Rejected_!' He cursed loudly at the man, and made sure to give the one-finger salute to the building as well before angrily stalking off.

Bakura was in an extremely irritated mood for the rest of the day. He spent hours doing absolutely nothing other than walk around Domino City, and ended up drinking the little hours he had left away in a bar close to home until Ryou was supposed to leave work.

He often went here when he was bored, but never this early. It was only about three in the afternoon when he entered, and the place was empty for the most part. Taking out a cigarette and lighting it, he found that maybe Yuugi was right when he said he needed something other in his life than his cigarettes and beer. All it would take was one night of him being too drunk, a puddle of the sticky substance on the floor, and a lit cigarette, to end his life in flames.

Literally.

Yuugi has been hinting for the man to settle down and get himself a 'pretty lady,' and even Bakura's threats of bodily harm could not shut him up that what Bakura needed was a person, and not ways to make him die faster.

He was wary of romantic relationships in general. Besides, he was only twenty-something... Bakura racked his brains trying to remember how old he was this year...Twenty three. Right, that was it; it would be a long time before smoking or drinking would catch up to him. He stifled a choke as his beer guzzling met with a cough.

So that was it. With no work to go to, life was terribly boring to the man.

Meeting Bakura Ryou certainly changed that.

He frowned drunkenly at that thought. He needed more beer to stop having all these weird thoughts. Shuddering at the admittedly true thought about Ryou, he raked a tired hand through the tangles of hair, shaking his head slowly.

And what was that about dating again? It wasn't like women had problems with him—well, no, that was actually almost a complete lie— it was he that had problems with women. Some were almost sickeningly flirtatious with him, something that annoyed him a bit. He supposed it was his genial and charming personality...

Bakura frowned again. It had to be the lack thereof, actually. Regardless, not once has he met a woman who didn't annoy the hell out of him with incessant gossiping and demands for brand name clothing.

More to the point, none of them was as fascinating as Ryou was.

Bakura furrowed his eyebrows together at that other strange notion, and was alone in his confusing thoughts, until a rather voluptuous woman came up and took the seat next to him.

"Heya, handsome," the woman smiled. "What are you doing here all by yourself?"

Bakura eyed her suspiciously, taking another drag from his cigarette. Drinking all of that liquor in anger had made his head hurt terribly, and holding conversations with annoying people was definitely pushing the limit.

"_Maybe _you'll like a night of fun with me," the woman suggested sultrily.

"Or _definitely_ not," Bakura drawled in a bored manner, mimicking her tone of voice. "Go away." He waved a drunken hand in a brushing motion to her direction.

"Don't be like that," the woman giggled. "Aren't you lonely?"

"I'm waiting for somebody," Bakura muttered. Ryou should be getting off from work soon.

"Oh come on. What other woman do you see in here that is _this_ beautiful?" she asked vainly, placing a hand over her chest.

"I'm waiting for a man," Bakura said, as if it was quite obvious.

He didn't really understand why the woman suddenly made a face, but he was glad that she got up to leave. "You could have just said you weren't interested," the woman said with revulsion, before leaving in a huff.

Bakura shrugged to himself, and took another swig of his mug. Didn't he say that from the beginning?

"Hey, you," he called out to the bartender. "What time is it?" The bartender told him it was nearing six twenty. Bakura nodded to himself. It was about time he left.

Shuffling the few streets back to the apartment building, Bakura hoped that he might be able to catch Ryou sometime tonight. That would certainly make this day worth it...

He tried to do the math in his head to figure out when Ryou should be coming back. He generally returned around seven, so that meant he should wait for... fourteen, no, forty minutes.

He took out another cigarette as he made his way into his apartment and lit it as he walked over to his window and pulled away the ratty curtain. From here, he could see when people entered or exited the building. Hopefully, he would be able to catch Ryou this way.

After watching several people mill about, Bakura pulled his cigarette out of his mouth when he saw a person that looked an awful lot like his boss walking into the building. The man was wearing sunglasses (really, sunglasses in February?), but it seemed like the guy could not get away from all his gravity defying coats.

Bakura blinked, and then realized the man—identity still unknown—had entered the building and disappeared from view. Perhaps it would be a good idea to break from people watching for a moment. That liquor was starting to get to him.

Just as that suggestion sluggishly crawled by, his cell phone rang.

The designated screen had "Mutou Yuugi" in its center. Why did he ever give Mutou his number, anyway? Bakura fumbled to open it. "Speak, Mutou."

"Youtai-kun!" Yuugi's voice resounded from the phone excitedly, forcing Bakura to pull the contraption a little further away from his ear. "I have _super special awesome_ news!"

"What?"

"Kaiba-kun approved the main character draft! My face is going to be in a videogame!"

"_What_?"

"I know! I'm glad you told me to do it, Youtai-kun!" Yuugi said happily.

'When the _fuck _did I tell him to do that?' Bakura thought in terror. "Where the hell is Kaiba?" he asked.

"I don't know; he left about ten minutes ago to go to that personal-outing that he missed last time. Well, that's what the secretary said."

"Oh, my fucking_ god_..." What the hell was Kaiba _thinking_?

"Youtai-kun," Yuugi said carefully. "Are you alright? You're slurring your words a bit. Have you been drinking?" Before he could lie, Yuugi began to go on about how bad it was for his health. Bakura coughed a little as a bit of smoke went down the wrong pipe. Somehow, Yuugi was able to deduce he was smoking at the moment as well from just that.

Bakura hung up in mid-lecture when he saw a familiar white-haired man's car drive up next to the entrance.

* * *

By the time he made it to the lobby, Ryou had only just opened his mailbox. Bakura moved to walk over to the man, the latter of who took out a sole letter.

This time, though, there was something interesting to report.

Ryou stared at the one piece of mail for a good ten seconds until he opened it with great fervor. Bakura noticed with great interest that the man became completely pallid as he read its contents, and that without a single word, he made his way to the elevator faster than Bakura thought was possible for the thin man. He didn't even see Bakura as he went by, and he was only two feet away.

'Let's see what reaction I can get from him now,' Bakura thought. The idea that now would probably not be a good time to agitate the already sickly man might have crossed through his mind, but alcohol was doing a very successful job of keeping it at bay.

He strode over to the elevator as well, and stuck out a hand to keep it from closing.

"Hey," he jeered, exhaling a smoke ring directly to the man. Ryou flinched, and looked up. Bakura noticed with glee that the man's already pale face suddenly drained of all possible color when he recognized him.

"How are you, Ryou?" Bakura advanced closer with a sneer, effectively allowing the doors to close.

Ryou's eyes narrowed in determination. "Get away from me," he cautioned.

"How about if I don't want to?" Bakura asked innocently. "Don't be like that, Ryou. Hurts my feelings." He grinned. "Why don't you give me a nice hug and make it better, hmm?" He held out his arms in a relaxed fashion, cigarette burning between his fingers of one hand.

"I'm warning you," the man said harshly, but his eyes were now beginning to dart about in fear. His words were in vain, though, and Bakura had now cornered him between one of the two far walls.

"Why are you so afraid of people touching you, Ryou?" Bakura asked. He grabbed a wrist with his free hand, and Ryou choked out a pained cry. "Have something you wanna hide?"

Placing his cigarette back between his lips, Bakura pulled on the glove of the hand he currently held captive.

Ryou began to scream loudly, and was frantically trying to pull his hand away. "Stop it! _Stop it_!" His yells became piercing and even more hysterical as the hand that held onto his wrist touched the bare skin exposed from the glove.

"Shut the fuck up! Just let me fucking see!" Bakura snarled in a drunken slur, and pushed him against the wall, hard enough that Ryou's back collided with the wall with a loud echo.

The glove dropped onto the floor without a sound.

Bakura relaxed his grip a moment later, and didn't even react when the other hand fisted his hair and slammed his head against the wall with even more force than he had done to Ryou and with such a blow that he doubled over and almost fell.

Ryou grabbed his glove off the floor, and bolted out of the elevator.

Bakura coughed a bit, wiping a bit of the saliva that had collected at the corner of his mouth away. He stared at his cigarette, now on the floor, that had been dislodged from its place in the short brawl.

A piece of white paper caught his eyes. His eyes slowly moved a little further to the left, and saw that in his haste, Ryou did not notice that the envelope of his letter had been dropped in his escape.

* * *

The next morning, Bakura was woken up by his routine cell phone alarm. He groaned, and clutched his head. There was an excruciating pain on one side of his head, and a dull one on the other side.

He recognized the latter as the side effect of a hangover, but the sharp one was relatively foreign. He tried to recall yesterday's events, and everything was reasonably clear until he got up to the bar.

He had had several drinks. Then he had gone home, where he watched people come in and out of the building. He thought he saw Kaiba. Then Yuugi called and said he was going to be in the new videogame.

Bakura snorted. Everything that had transpired up to that point must have only been a really strange and silly dream.

There was more than that, though. Bakura then remembered meeting up with Ryou, and then trying to take off one of the man's gloves. He had done so, and was beaten quite severely for it.

That was more reminiscent of a disturbing nightmare.

He looked down, and picked up the envelope addressed to a Bakura Ryou that lay wrinkled in his futon next to him.

* * *

Bakura purposely walked the stairs out of his apartment building to work that morning.

As he warily looked around him before stepping out into the lobby, thoughts twisted confusingly in his mind.

Burn marks.

Shaped like cigarette butts.

They looked rather old.

Perhaps they were from his childhood.

No wonder Ryou hated his smoking.

Haphephobia. That was what Ryou had. The irrational fear of being touched, often complemented with the intense dread of touching others.

And if what Bakura had concluded after all his observation experience with the other man, Ryou must abhor all who even lifted a single cigarette, much less use one.

Bakura was uncomfortable with knowing this new fact of Ryou, a fact that has now very much soured his formerly edacious appetite for Ryou's past.

He himself had never dealt with anything like that. He grew up in an obnoxious, but never violent, environment. He turned out the way he was just because he felt like doing so.

Ryou, however, became an adult in the exactly opposite fashion that what he, and what he believed that most people, would have expected: a generally courteous piano teacher, soft in manner and speech.

None of them knew.

Back on that first elevator ride, being in such a confined space with a smoker was probably extremely upsetting for Ryou. It didn't help that Bakura's own attitude fueled the spite in Ryou either.

Then violence became a factor to coping, when he ventured too closely and dangerously. Bakura could not help but feel just the slightest bit sick for finding Ryou's aggression humorous now.

And then there was that envelope.

He really didn't know much about the envelope he now brought along with him in his bag, other than that the letter inside had been a government-issued one.

It had to do something with a neighboring city's court. But what could it possibly be if reading the contents of it left Ryou as pale as a ghost?

It had taken Bakura a minute, but that moment was all it took, to tell himself that he owed it to Ryou that much not to continue meddling in his affairs and try to dig into what the letter was about.

It was also in that instant that the idea that maybe it should stop altogether surfaced.

* * *

"Youtai-kun! You're back!" Yuugi greeted enthusiastically, rolling himself in his swiveling chair over to his colleague.

"Obviously," Bakura muttered, staring at the approved character designs for Kaiba's new game. Specifically, he was boring holes into the main character slot, which had Yuugi's pictures under the caption. 'Yami Yuugi' looked as... disturbing as ever, with his more-than-distinctive jewelry and clothing style. Yuugi's version of himself resembled the cherubic-faced man to a tee. It really would not have passed if Yuugi actually looked older than a high school freshman.

"That's because I don't go _adding years to my face_ by smoking and drinking, Youtai-kun," Yuugi said loudly. "And I happen to _like_ the style." He took the papers away from Bakura. "I like to think of it as the 'Other Me,'" he sighed abstractedly with a big grin. He looked over to Bakura, who was currently staring at him in horror. "You were talking out loud, you know."

Bakura snapped out of his trance, and shook his head wildly before beginning to start his computer. "Good," he grumbled. "I was beginning to think I was going fucking crazy..."

Damn, first all that shit with seeing Kaiba outside his apartment building and getting beaten up by Ryou and thinking it was all a stupid dream, and then waking up with that envelope next to him to tell him all of what happened last night was really real, and now actually thinking for a moment that Yuugi could read minds... There was something seriously wrong with him.

Was _that _really affecting him that much?

"Was _what_ affecting you all that much, Youtai-kun?" Yuugi asked. "Who's Ryou?"

"_Shit_!" Bakura shouted, exasperated. "I'm doing it again!"

"No, that time, I actually read your mind," Yuugi said, his large purple eyes boring into Bakura seriously.

Bakura stared at him. '_Fuck! I _am_ losing it!'_

Yuugi suddenly cracked up. "Gosh, Youtai-kun! You actually _believed_ me!" Yuugi chortled with laughter as if Bakura had done something incredibly funny, and began rolling back and forth in his seat.

"Great to know that'll be the last time I do _that_," Bakura snapped, the tips of his ears turning red. The sharp pain in his head throbbed a bit. "Shut the fuck up, Mutou. I have a headache today."

"What's with you today, Youtai-kun?" Yuugi asked, this time with a genuine concerned tone. "You seem out of it. What were you doing yesterday?"

"'Adding years to my face,'" Bakura muttered.

"Yes, besides suffering a slow and painful death," Yuugi said impatiently. "You were mumbling about a guy named Ryou. Who is he?"

"New neighbor," Bakura said vaguely.

"A _new_ _neighbor_? You said he beat you up." His purple eyes turned even more circular than usual. "I find that really hard to believe."

"Oh, thanks," Bakura said sarcastically. Then he scowled, pride kicking in. "And for your information, Mutou, he attacked me when I wasn't defending myself, alright?"

No way would he have fought back after seeing _that..._

"That's usually when people _do_ attack, Youtai-kun," Yuugi said slowly. He cocked his head to the side, looking pensively at his coworker. "Did you do something to him?"

"Why the fuck do you automatically think _I_ was the one who started it?" Bakura snapped.

'Shit. I _did_ start it,' Bakura thought guiltily to himself. He had no right prying into the man's personal business, and putting him through all of that suffering when he should have known that something like that might have happened. Now he had to deal with the gut feeling of guilt for it.

He didn't even know he had one of those to begin with. This had to be what they called karma.

"Karma's 'what comes around, goes around,'" Yuugi said sagely. "What you're thinking of is 'conscience,' young grasshopper."

"_Fuck_, Mutou! How much did I say out loud?"

"Only the last part." Yuugi frowned, back to being serious again. "If you did something wrong, Youtai-kun, you should apologize."

Bakura snorted cynically. "He's not going to accept any 'Sorry-I-was-a-complete-asshole' from me."

"I did, and you didn't even have to say anything. Some people like having the words put out there, Youtai-kun," Yuugi shrugged, and rolled himself away to his own desk. "_And_," he continued, pointing a finger directly at his blameworthy colleague, "I swear it'll make you feel better, too."

* * *

**Author's Note:**

Kaiba's long rant about Keith Howard (Bandit Keith) was quite obviously inspired by Little Kuriboh's **YGOTAS!** Kaiba's "Screw the lawsuits; I have money" was suggested by **love_ lawliet**. There is also Kemo, his hair, and one of his catchphrases: "Rejected!" Also, "Other Me" is a brief reference to Yuugi's name for Atemu in the manga.

And the anime that Yuugi was watching is basically a regurgitation of the story of Jounouchi in the Duelist Kingdom arc... Don't worry; he has no sister in need of surgery in this universe.

I owe it to you, O Revered Reader, to explain my reasoning behind finally having to add the reason for Ryou's haphephobia:

I was a little uneasy about the child abuse I placed in the middle end of the chapter, because I'm usually not that comfortable reading about things like that. I tried not to dwell into it, because that would make it ridiculously angsty. That plot device, as overused as it may be in that respect, will simply feed into the newest addition to characters in this story.

But going back to the point; from next chapter on, Bakura's plan to "make [living here] hell for [him]" is basically done for, since I have moved on to a grander and more substance-filled plot!


	4. Agreement

Bakura waited for a while in the lobby for Ryou to return from work. Minutes eventually made an hour, and his gut told him that even in the worst possible traffic jam, there was no possible way that Ryou would still not be here.

"Youtai!" Jounouchi exclaimed as he opened the door of apartment 605, hair even more ruffled than usual. "What's up?"

Bakura jerked a thumb over to the door next to them with the free hand not holding the envelope. "Where's Bakura Ryou? I need to talk to him about something."

Jounouchi scratched his head, which unsurprisingly, did not help with the mess of blond hair knotted together. "Bakura? ...I think he said that he was going somewhere today."

"What, he didn't go to work or something?"

"Yeah. He had to go outta town... Damn, where was it again?"

"Akayama City?"

"Yeah, that was it!" Jounouchi said in a surprised tone, eyebrows shooting up. "How did you know?"

"I'm asking the questions here, Jounouchi. Was he going to a courthouse?"

"A court?" Jounouchi frowned. "I don't know. He didn't say that much, just that he would be back later tonight or something when I asked him. And just in case you're wondering, he didn't say why he was going there, either." He blinked. "That's it?"

"...Yeah."

"Okay, then." Jounouchi shrugged. "Good night, man."

"Bye," Bakura muttered, and turned his heel towards the hall. Jounouchi closed his door, and the white-haired man was alone in his thoughts as he walked down the length of the hall to the elevator.

He made the trip back down to the lobby again. Soon, though, feelings of foolishness and embarrassment found their way to him, and the man found himself leaving the building to pace outside the entrance.

In his anxiety of what he was mentally preparing himself to do, he took out a cigarette, and tried to light it to calm his nerves.

'Shit. This shouldn't be so fucking difficult,' Bakura thought, referring to both lighting the stick and what he was planning on saying when Ryou returned. 'Aw, fuck. What the hell am I even doing here?' he hissed to himself.

It didn't help that Yuugi's Voice of Reason was starting to become a single entity with his own dusty conscience. It only made it at least slightly more disturbing and uncomfortable than this situation already was.

He looked up again when he was finally successful in doing so, and just managed to catch Ryou exiting his car.

He looked like how he did all the time— pallid, frail, and with the plain pair of gloves on again. As he walked briskly up to the sidewalk, he deliberately avoided any person smoking in his path. And if one were to look closely, as Bakura was doing now, one would have seen the look of utter revulsion on the man's face.

The one Bakura formerly thought was only orchestrated for him only.

And then the expression was gone, and he was once again the demure renter of 601.

Bakura finally willed his legs to move, and stood in Ryou's path just as he walked up the step to the entrance.

"Bakura Ryou."

Ryou looked up. Then there was that face again, the one that distorted itself and made it appear that there was nothing more repulsive than what laid before his eyes at that moment in time. He tried to move around him, but Bakura effectively made a barrier over the glass doors with an arm.

"Shit, let me finish!" Bakura snapped. He was already bending his pride to do this; the least Ryou could do was hear him out.

"I am not interested in hearing anything from you, whether you're bending your pride or not," Ryou shot back.

_Damn it_! He was doing it again.

"Just fucking hear me out for the next minute. That's all I need," Bakura gritted. Ryou opened his mouth, as if to say something, but then must have decided otherwise, for he let Bakura continue. "I'm sorry for last night, alright? I was drunk, and what I did was fucked up."

Ryou was silent. "People do foolish things when they're drunk," he muttered to the ground.

"Glad you got the point," Bakura said, relieved inside. A feeling of intense relaxation finally washed over the man. He had finally managed to get over his inner Yuugi. "You dropped this," he said, holding out the envelope.

Ryou slowly took it from him, and stared at it with an inexpressible look, but then finally looked up. "Is this all?"

"Yeah... that's about it."

"Good," Ryou said lightly, his eyes meeting Bakura's. "I can pretend that last night never happened, Youtai Bakura, on one condition. Follow it, and this will never be brought up again."

Bakura blinked. Was it really that easy? Was his inner Yuugi going to vanish for good?

"The condition is never to come near me again," he said, tone flat. "Do I have your word?"

"What?"

"All I ask is that you leave me alone from now on," Ryou said simply, giving him an odd look, as if wondering why did Bakura's face suddenly twisted up.

The reason behind that puckered face was that such a request did not hold out well in Bakura's mind.

Even he had to admit his reaction made little sense; didn't Bakura tell himself not even ten hours ago that maybe it'll be best if he threw in the towel on harassing Ryou?

Yet what Ryou was saying now… it was certainly seeming a lot more inclusive than just dropping the "harassing". It seemed like Bakura was looking at a full-on unofficial-restraining-order.

And for that same reason, he did not like where this was going.

Time to worm his way out.

"Whatever, I'll quit it with the touching if it fucking makes you that uncomfortable," he shrugged. "Shit, I can do that."

Ryou gave him a pointed look. "No, Youtai Bakura," he gritted out slowly. "What I mean is to stop interacting with me. Permanently."

God _damn_. Bakura was right. He tried to laugh it off. "Fuck, Ryou. We live a floor away from each other. You aren't serious to think that'll actually fucking work."

"I am completely serious." Ryou continued giving him that odd look. "It'll work if you simply just _stay away_."

Bakura did not appreciate the acidity in those last two words.

"Shit, I already said I didn't mean what happened last night! Why the fuck do you act like I carry the plague?"

Ryou let out a cynical snort. "I should be the one asking you why the hell do you keep insisting on bothering _me_! What do _I _ever do to you?" His eyes flashed angrily, and for a moment, his normally flat, deadened eyes were more alive than Bakura could recall. "Just _fucking leave me alone_!"

And there went that ever-nagging feeling to drive-Ryou-up-the-wall surfacing. "You challenged _me_. I told you I was going to make your time here miserable."

"Oh, yes," Ryou said sarcastically. "And we all know how great that went."

That was a serious attempt to piss him off. "You _shut the fuck up_!" Bakura hissed. "I'm trying to apologize to you, and you're fucking telling me off for _that_? I only stopped because you're the one with those burns— "

Ryou's eyes suddenly flashed. "Shut your mouth!" he snarled, clenching the white envelope tightly. "I don't need your disgusting _pity_!" He spat out the last word with such venom that it seemed to ring in Bakura's ears. "Just agree, damn you. _Then it'll all be over_. Isn't that what you wanted? Why are you making this so complicated?"

"_I'm not_!" Bakura snarled. "You know what? Fine! _Fine_! I fucking agree!" He threw up his arms in mock-defeat.

Score one for his excessive pride to suddenly show up out of nowhere, and promise Ryou what he had been—sneakily— trying to avoid this entire conversation. "Happy?"

Ryou's heavy breathing slowed, and his form sagged over his thin frame. "Good," he finally muttered flatly. "Then I would expect this conversation to have been our last. Now _excuse me_." Edging away from Bakura as he tensely walked past him, he entered the building without another word.

Outside, Bakura stared after the retreating figure. Shifting his weight from one foot to the other to get the circulation back in there, Bakura shot a death glare at a young man who had been eavesdropping in on the whole fiery exchange about ten feet away.

"What the fuck are _you_ looking at, jackass?" The young man promptly ran off.

It was after several more minutes of standing out there in the cold before Bakura finally came to his senses and began his dramatic journey up the stairs. He made sure to slam the soles of his boots heavily against the linoleum as he trekked past the lobby.

Although a part of him was finally content at having finally been able to get last night's incident over him, a larger portion of him regretted having his pride swoop in to save his face and objected at the rather extreme conditions he had to accept.

That larger part of him swiftly received a mental kick to the head.

'I should be _celebrating_,' Bakura protested loudly to himself as he stepped onto the elevator with an old woman who lived a few floors down. The elderly lady darted her eyes about to try to find with whom he was speaking aloud to. Finding no such person, she slowly edged away from the man, movements going unnoticed.

Unbeknownst to Bakura at that moment, what Ryou had said was wrong. As much as Bakura appreciated putting the awkwardness behind them, wanting "it all to be over" was quite inaccurate.

In fact, it couldn't possibly be further from the truth.

* * *

As if their agreement was written in stone, Bakura did not even catch a glimpse of the man the next morning. Consequently, there was a brief feeling of disappointment, and though Bakura tried to suppress the traitorous thought. it didn't work out that well.

As such, Bakura's brain waves once again registered as zero on the ride to work. Once there in Kaiba Corp, though, he had to bring up the subject when Yuugi finally poked the relay of last night's events from him.

"Yes, Mutou," he ground out through clenched teeth. "I talked to him."

Yuugi beamed, and clapped him on the shoulder like a proud father to a son who had just won a soccer game. "See, Youtai-kun? Didn't I say it'll make you feel better?" he asked self-importantly.

"If I said 'yes', would you go away?" Bakura growled rudely.

"For now, yup."

"Then 'yes'," Bakura gritted out. "Now piss off."

He didn't want to talk about it, especially with someone like Mutou Yuugi, who was infamous for making a big deal out of every little thing, especially if it didn't concern himself. It had barely been half a day since that last encounter, and the man was already sinking back into boredom.

He was once again in the pitiful routine he lived his life in before he met Ryou.

Bakura deliberately made the walking trip from the lobby to the elevator a slow one that night, in hopes of catching a glimpse of the man who has seemed to have made himself scarce. It was unfruitful, and Bakura was especially forceful with the buttons in the tiny elevator shaft as he rode up, embarrassed for even purposely waiting for the man to make an appearance.

In his apartment, Bakura immediately made a bee-line for his refrigerator and took out a beer. Pulling the tiny aluminum tab back with a satisfying loud 'pop' sound, he took a deep swallow from the cold liquid as he drew a folding chair over to the windows again.

Boredom could do strange things to people, he reasoned solemnly. It was especially dangerous when the person experiencing it finally gets a grasp of excitement, but only to have it taken away, and have boredom replace it double-fold.

How low has he sunken to resort to stalking neighbors through his windows, anyway?

Just as he contemplated the severity of his recent actions, his eyeballs centered in on Ryou appearing out of his car.

"Well, fuck you, Bakura Ryou," he snapped. "I like looking at you. What the hell are you gonna do about it?" he muttered as he took another long sip.

He watched intently as Ryou took something out of the trunk of his car —it was something large, and about the size of two sofa seats stacked on top of each other. Bakura frowned. "What the hell is that?"

Maybe he ought to invest in a pair of binoculars… No, that would be bringing it over the line just a tad bit, he thought to himself.

Ryou struggled with the large package, and Bakura snorted as the pale man tried to hold the thing with his thin arms with extreme difficulty. Finally, though, Ryou disappeared into the building.

Well, that was anticlimactic.

Bakura made a disgruntled sound by sucking on his teeth, and flopped back down on his couch.

What the hell was wrong with him? Didn't he just— and quite forcefully, too— say that he wasn't going to go near Bakura Ryou not even a day ago?

Boredom was hardly a sound excuse to go back on that. And God knows he didn't want inner Yuugi tearing through his gut again. Bakura scowled to himself, and turned on the television.

"—L'Oreal. Because I'm worth it—"

No.

"—For everything else, there's Kaiba Cor—"

No.

"—Awesome ultra special sexy transformation sequence, go!"

_What the fuck was that?_

Bakura turned off the television, and tossed the remote to the side.

* * *

It seemed that Bakura's stars chose not to shine on him for the next few days, because the most accurate description the man had for the rest of the week was "fucking bullshit":

Yuugi would not stop bothering him about Ryou, first of all. He insisted that "as his best friend", he had the right to know the low-down on as much of his life as possible. Bakura fired back that the man had serious reality issues.

It didn't help that the deadline for their game was coming up. Bakura could only stand so much of working and listening to Yuugi's complaints of him being a very "un-super special awesome friend."

Shit. Yuugi could kiss his ass.

After a few hours or incessant whining by the second day, however, Yuugi switched to the "silent treatment" tactic. He really ought to have known that Bakura preferred that by now.

Shortly after, the elevator in the building broke down— while he wasn't inside, thank the gods for that at least. Apparently, it would be at least two more days until it could be fixed completely. Until then, residents had to walk up the steep steps home.

Bakura never regretted smoking as much as he did then as he wheezed and cursed his way up the seven flights to his apartment.

And then, there was the worst of it all: Ryou was completely erased from eyesight, both general-scan version, and even when his eyeballs were quite deliberately boring holes out of his windows in an attempt to pinpoint the man from the sea of people streaming about daily.

It was as if he had disappeared.

He contemplated asking Jounouchi where the man had gone again, but had been hesitating because that would have been considered going back on his words. Neither inner Yuugi nor his pride could take it.

So it was either satisfy his curiosity and have another annoying tri-colored hair, high pitched voice reprimanding him for being such an awful person, or ignore it all and continue his extremely uneventful life.

At least he had stopped talking aloud to himself.

Shit.

On the fourth day of his "Get the Fuck Out of My Way" mentality, Bakura was pretty sure it would be any minute now before boredom or frustration would call out time and bring him down under. Yuugi was still ignoring him, and refused to answer to anything Bakura said to him directly. Instead, he would ask fellow coworkers to relay messages he had for his "ex-best friend," and insist on only answering work-related requests said "ex-best friend" had, the same way.

Bakura was now quite certain that the man must look this youthful not because he was in pristine physical health, but because he must truly only be a child that somehow fudged his résumé when he applied to Kaiba Corp.

No, he was _damn_ certain.

It didn't help that Kaiba was getting on everyone's cases today. The Big Man was apparently going to take the rest of the day off for some mysterious reason, and felt obliged to breathe down every worker's neck before he made his dramatic exit with his billowing coat and miniature army of assistants.

Bakura had just solemnly concluded to himself that today was the worst day by far as he dragged himself up the stairs to the seventh floor after work. He took a deep breath and leaned against the banister for a short break somewhere between the fifth and sixth floor.

"God, if you're really up there, I'd really fucking appreciate a sign that says I'm supposed to make it past this week," Bakura muttered to himself.

"Yo! That you, Youtai?" called a pleasantly surprised voice about a flight above him.

Bakura jerked his head up. 'Holy shit! There really _i_s a—?'

Wait. It was just Jounouchi. He rolled his eyes as the blond sauntered down the steps to stand in front of him.

The sloppily dressed man appeared to be going somewhere, and had a large, brightly packaged box in his arms with which he balanced with some difficulty.

"Jounouchi," Bakura greeted curtly.

"The elevator still isn't working?" Jounouchi asked sympathetically. "Sorry about that, man."

Bakura grunted a incoherent affirmative reply. He gave Jounouchi and the dragon-speckled wrapping paper a wary look. "Where the hell are you going with that?"

"Oh, me?" Jounouchi lifted the package a bit and beamed at it. "Birthday gift. Heading to a party now."

"_This late_?"

Jounouchi turned an interesting shade of pink. "Well, you know…"

"No, I don't, actually."

Jounouchi coughed out a nervous chuckle. Then his face suddenly lit up. "Hey, you ever talked to Bakura about whatever it was you were looking for him for?"

Sure, change the subject.

"Yeah," Bakura muttered. "Went real well, too."

Jounouchi nodded. "That's good to hear, man. You know, he's back in Akayama again."

Bakura's ears perked up at this. It was one thing if he asked where the man was; it was a complete other thing for someone else to innocently spill the beans.

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah. He didn't tell you?"

"Obviously not. "

Jounouchi snorted at the dry nature of the reply, but then continued. "Well, he told me that this trip would be the last one, in case you were wondering."

"Why?"

"Man, he _really_ didn't say anything to you about all of this?" Jounouchi's eyebrows shot up, as they always did when the blond was shocked. "Dude, didn't you know? He's gonna bring back his—"

_Brrrrrrr. Brrrrrr._

Jounouchi suddenly stopped, and fumbled for his vibrating phone. "Sorry, dude," he apologized to the now scowling Bakura. "Yeah! I'm coming now," he said with a bright smile to his caller. "I'll be down there in just a sec, alright? Just keep the car there for now."

Flipping the phone shut, he smiled apologetically to Bakura, who was still waiting very impatiently for Jounouchi to finish his blasted sentence.

"Really sorry, dude. I'm in a hurry," he said. "Talk to you later. But you'll probably see real soon, anyway. He's coming back tomorrow night." Balancing his present carefully again, Jounouchi nodded a good-bye to Bakura before continuing his walk down the stairs.

"Damn it, Jounouchi!" Bakura hissed as he stomped the rest of the way with renewed vigor. "Couldn't even finish your fucking last three words?" He pushed the door to the seventh floor open with a loud smack, glower deepening.

Flopping down on his couch, he made a make-shift pillow with his arms, and stared at the gray ceiling.

"'Tomorrow night,'" he repeated out loud. "Well, about fucking time."

* * *

The lucky stars were back to work, Bakura decided the next day.

The elevator was working once again, and the trip down to the lobby was a smooth one, though quiet.

Kaiba was in a good mood as well. Bakura reckoned the man must have gotten laid.

He snorted. As _if_.

Regardless, it was starting out to be a good day.

Yet every once in a while, Bakura could not resist sneaking a peek at the time and praying for the day to go by faster. He had had boredom forced upon him for so long already. The wait to end it was agonizing.

Sometime in the afternoon, Bakura's eyes drifted to the lower right-hand corner of his computer screen as he finalized the layout of the Millennium Key for the thirtieth time that day.

It was already three twenty. He had quite a while to wait until he could go home. He exhaled under his breath.

Yuugi's bright hair suddenly appeared in front of him.

"Gah!" Bakura exclaimed in surprise, jerking his head back. "What the fuck, Mutou?"

"What do you keep looking at, Youtai-kun?" the man questioned, raking his eyes over the screen.

" 'The fuck? I thought you weren't talking to me anymore," Bakura snapped.

"Oh, no! That's right!' Yuugi gasped, clamping a hand over his mouth. "Shoot!"

Bakura snorted. "Amazing that you even held out as long as three days."

Yuugi sighed dramatically. "Three days, six hours, twelve minutes, and almost forty seconds, Youtai-kun." Then he shrugged his small shoulders. "Oh, well, I was getting tired of it anyway." He beamed, and scooted his chair over to his once-again best friend. "So…" he began.

"If you're asking about Ryou, it's not gonna happen," Bakura warned.

"Aww," Yuugi pouted. Bakura suppressed another eye-roll. "Well, can't blame me for trying."

Then he was silent, and Bakura went back to work.

"But come _on_, Youtai-kun!" the cherubic-faced man wheedled, forcing Bakura to groan and throw up his hands in frustration. "Don't I even deserve a _teensy weensy _bit of information for being the bigger person and making up?" He clasped his hands together. "Please?" he pleaded.

"This is the only time I'll ever consider you as the 'bigger person,'" Bakura snorted.

"Come on," Yuugi pleaded. "Just tell me what happened between you and Ryou…?"

"Just one more time, Mutou," Bakura gritted out. "You just bring that up _one more time_, and I'll stop talking to you for good. I fucking mean it."

"Aw, you're such a kidder, Youtai-kun," Yuugi giggled uneasily, smacking Bakura's shoulder good-naturedly. Then he stopped. "You didn't really mean that, right?"

"_Don't_ test me."

* * *

After work, Bakura made it home in record time. He strode across the lobby quickly, and noticed with some discontentment that Ryou wasn't at his usual place by the mailboxes.

Bakura scowled. Well, the chance of him catching Ryou right now was slim to none, anyhow.

Leaning against one of the side walls of the elevator, he instinctively fumbled for his pack of cigarettes. The pack was out of his pocket and in his hand before the man thought better of it and pushed it deeply back in, reminded of the last time he smoked in here. Sighing, he reached to press the "close doors" button.

"Wait, wait!" a high-pitched feminine voice called out. Bakura looked down as a small hand thrust itself past the closing doors, effectively stopping them from closing. The rest of the body followed, in what appeared to be a pink coat, big, round glasses, and pigtails.

The little girl blinked her owlish eyes when she gaped at Bakura. "Daddy?"

Bakura raised his eyebrows. "You talking to me, kid?"

"Kyouko-chan!" Bakura looked back up to see Ryou appearing at the doors. The thin man's eyes went from the little girl to Bakura, and then back again. "Come here," he said sharply, stepping out of the threshold. "We'll ride the next one."

The tiny child stared once more at Bakura, but obeyed Ryou's words, and skipped over to him so that the pair of them stood outside the doors.

"Daddy!" She reached out to grab for Ryou's hand, but the man quickly jammed both hands into his coat pockets, stiffening. The little girl look confused again, but finally settled to clasp her fingers onto Ryou's coat tail.

"Shit, Ryou. This kid is _yours_?" Bakura asked incredulously.

Bakura ogled at the man, and apparently, father, just as the doors closed between them.

The ride up was dizzying.

"Holy _shit_!" Bakura exclaimed out loud. He gripped the railing along one of the elevator sides.

Was that seriously Ryou's kid?

It was all clicking now. What Jounouchi had been telling him about— Ryou was bringing back a kid from Akayama. And that huge sofa-cushion looking thing that Bakura saw Ryou carrying one night was the girl's new futon. Damn. It was all making sense.

She looked to be at least four or five. Ryou couldn't possibly be more than twenty-three or four at _most_.

Bakura tried to do the math in his head with some difficulty. That meant that Ryou was only about… about— Bakura finally gave up, and started counting fingers— eighteen or nineteen years old when the kid was born.

Eighteen or nineteen?

"They're not biologically related," Bakura finally concluded out loud in a firm voice. "He adopted the kid."

The nagging question 'What the hell is Ryou doing adopting a five year old kid when he's only in his mid-twenties' instantaneously began to poke at him impatiently. "Well, he can't fucking be the kid's biological father," he argued aloud. "What lady would be crazy enough to make that stuck-up asshole's babies?"

He didn't even care that he had started that annoying habit of talking out loud to himself again. This was a lot bigger than getting odd looks cast his way by strangers— a little girl called Ryou, 'Daddy'.

'Daddy', god damn it. '_Daddy_.'

Bakura decided then and there that he needed to get to the bottom of this. What was this kid's _real_ relationship to Bakura Ryou? Bakura had to add the adjective 'real' simply because the man refused to believe the two were blood-related.

There was just seriously no way.

If they were by some crazy chance really biologically related, the family resemblance was weak. The only shared physical feature between the two was the hair color… and maybe the eye color.

There were plenty of odd-hair-colored people running around in Japan, and _especially_ in Domino City. Look at _Yuugi_.

"Similar hair and eye color means nothing," Bakura said to himself.

Hmm. Stark white hair was pretty rare even by those standards, though.

All the more reason to dig up the connection between the two: He needed to know.

Even if that meant breaking his vow to Ryou and inner Yuugi, he really needed to know.

And who the hell even _cared_ about inner Yuugi, anyhow?

Bakura looked up from his surroundings, and realized that he had walked the entire length of the hallway without noticing.

As he pretended to no one but himself that going down the entire hallway was his intention all along, he began to think.

* * *

**Author's Note: **Do not despair! I will explain all of this later! Just stay tuned, yeah?

Bakura and Yuugi's brief conversation was loosely based off of YGOTAS's Christmas special's conversation between Yami Malik and Kaiba, I believe. I had to tweak it, since there was really no place I can possibly add "mind-slave" and "binky-boy" anywhere. Right.

Bakura's channel surfing! Ahh, that was fun to put in: Who doesn't recognize those obscure lines?


	5. Downstairs

"Yeah, so, that's that."

Old Man Tachibana gave the white-haired man a suspicious look. "And tell me _why_ exactly you want to move again?"

"I told you," Bakura snapped, drumming his fingers impatiently against the wooden desk between him and his apartment building's landlord in the latter's office. It had taken an entire day for Bakura to think of a suitable plan. He was in the landlord's office now to put it in motion. "Wanted a change of scenery. And also to be a little closer to the ground, just in case your shitty elevator breaks down again."

The balding man's skepticism deepened three-fold. "You wanna fill out all this paperwork and move all your stuff just to live exactly one floor down. All of this for a change of scenery and to walk six flights instead of seven."

"No," Bakura said impatiently. "Another guy and a kid lives exactly one floor down. I wanna move to the place right to the left...It has to be exactly to the left— There's a guy named Jounouchi living in the next apartment." He gestured with his hands the layout of the place in question, as if that was exactly as simple as it sounded.

Tachibana rubbed his temples slowly. "So basically, you want to move from 701 to 603?… That's it?"

"That's what I've been saying for the past ten minutes, yes."

"And you're saying you want this to all happen when?" he asked wearily.

"Obviously as soon as possible."

* * *

Bakura flipped through the pages of the thick leaflet "The King of Games" videogame characters plan in his hands once more, muttering under his breath.

He winced at the what-the-fuck-was-his-name-again— 'Yami Yuugi' picture. Hair-raising as hell. Literally.

Why did Kaiba accept this, he'll never guess.

Bakura sighed silently, tossing the papers to the side. To hell with it. Things could be worse, he supposed.

As usual when there was nothing at work to distract him, Bakura's thoughts drifted off to Bakura Ryou.

Ryou still didn't know that the renter of 701 was soon going to be in 603. Just as well. He'll see his spanking, brand-new other next door neighbor in a few days.

Heh heh heh heh heh.

Hmm, that reminded him. He needed to start moving his things. It wasn't like there was much to move, but he'd rather it happen quicker, so he'd he able to stalk— _observe_ Ryou and his kid a bit sooner.

…That wasn't creepy at all.

"Mutou. I need your help with something."

Yuugi jerked his head up, one-hundred watt smile in place at the mention of his name and 'your help' in the same sentence. "Just say the word, Youtai-kun!" he beamed eagerly. "Advice in relationships? I'm really good at hooking people up, you know."

Before Bakura could very nastily tell him that he would rather very much live un-"hooked up" for the rest of his life than accept love life advice from the cherubic-faced man, his effervescent colleague continued.

"The newest imports of games? My grandpa owns a game shop and he can tell you about all the newest stuff. Ooh! There's one like arm-wrestling called Monster Fighter that you might like… RPGs, maybe?"

"No, listen—"

"Oh! Or is it borrowing money?" The tri-colored haired man made a slight frown at that. "In that case, I can lend you some, but my interest rate is ten-in-ten—"

"No, Mutou!" Bakura interrupted, smacking a stack of papers over his coworker's head. It didn't even ruffle the other's hair. "Can you for once listen without interrupting for ten seconds? Shit!"

But at least now he knew if he ever was to go in debt, he would never borrow from Yuugi. He was pretty sure even actual, hard-core loans sharks didn't ask for so much.

"I'm moving from my apartment."

Yuugi's purple eyes turned impossibly wide. "Did Ryou-san beat you up again? I thought you said that you made up with him and that the two of you were all better with each other!"

"Could you stop saying it as if this is a fucking domestic abuse case? This isn't a fucking lovers' spat, you fucking idiot!" Bakura hissed exasperatedly. "I'm just moving a floor down and I need someone to help me move my crap there."

"Why are you only moving down a floor?…And in the same building?"

"That's my own bloody business!" He slammed a fist against his work desk, rattling a few pencils in the mug he kept for that purpose. "Shit! Just forget I even asked you!"

"Aww, no, don't be like that, Youtai-kun!" Yuugi begged, clasping his hands together in what he probably believed to be in genuine regret. "I'm sorry!" He raised his hands, keeping them together as he bowed his head meekly. "I'll help you move!"

Bakura gave a guttural grunt in response.

* * *

Bakura only saw Ryou twice after that time in the elevator with the little girl. The first of the two was quite early in the morning:

That kid Kyouko was waiting for the elevator with her 'father'—Bakura had to add the mental air-quotes every time he used the word in that context— on the sixth floor.

He supposed that Ryou was taking the kid to school, if that uniform was anything to go by: blue jacket, white shirt and a yellow skirt with suspenders, complete with a bright yellow hat. Typical kindergarten garb. So she had to have been four or five. There was something slightly off about her appearance, though, that made her shirt look somewhat lopsided, as if she had clumsily buttoned it unevenly herself. Her hair looked a bit messy, as well, like a comb had attempted to drag itself through the unruly white mop, and failed.

Bakura happened to be in the elevator at the time, and though Kyouko stepped forward to get on, Ryou quickly yanked her back by the loop stitched onto the girl's cherry red book bag.

"This one's too full, Kyouko," Bakura heard the man mutter to the surprised girl. "Let's wait for the next one."

''Too full', my ass,' Bakura snarled inwardly. Including himself, there were all of three people in the lift.

The second time was much later in the day, about two days after the first one. Bakura remembered that day especially vividly because it was that same day that the "The King of Games" videogame completion deadline arrived.

The game would come out in one month. Internationally. The voice actors for the United States version were already decided.

Bakura knew all of this because it was all that same day that Yuugi was going to help him move in his new apartment. He had already received the new keys from Old Man Tachibana, and he could move in to 603 as soon as he could remove all his belongings from his old apartment.

"Dan Green!" Yuugi said excitedly. "I can't believe it!" He squealed like an infatuated middle school girl, hugging his back pack closely to his chest. "I'm going to be voiced by Dan Green for the English version!"

Bakura decided to humor him as the pair rode the train beside each other. "Who the fuck's Dan Green?" he asked in a bored voice, head resting on his palm propped up by the metal armrest on the side.

Yuugi gasped. "You mean you don't know? He's _only_ one of the best American voice actors in the anime business!" Yuugi whipped out a hand to prove his point, tapping at each finger as he rattled off titles. "He was Knuckles the Echidna in _Sonic X_, Kuroda Ryuichiro in _Gokusen_, and Mewtwo in _Pokémon_, not to mention dozens more. Can you believe it? _Pokémon_, Youtai-kun!" He waved his three out-stretched fingers in Bakura's face.

"Move your fucking hand away from my fucking space, Mutou," Bakura snapped, pushing the frantic hand away. "What the hell are you talking about? I thought Pokémon didn't talk."

"Oh, come on! Some Pokémon are _smart _enough to learn to speak human-speech!" Yuugi said impatiently. Hel_lo_!" He tilted the tone of his last word's syllable up like it was obvious. "He's über cool. You wouldn't believe the amount of fans he has."

"…You're talking about a _voice_ actor. Not even a _real_ actor that you people see on screen. A voice actor...A voice actor with a _fan_ club."

"Yeah!"

The tone in Bakura's voice went unnoticed.

"It's like an all-star cast! There's even Eric Stuart!"

Bakura guessed that he was supposed to know who this Stuart guy was, too.

Well, he didn't.

"Eric _Stuart_!" Yuugi repeated. "Oh, come _on_, Youtai-kun!"

"Do you _hear_ any bells in my head ringing, Mutou?" Bakura snapped, tired of the games.

"_We are now arriving at Ginmaru Station_," the female electronic voice announced from the speakers.

"Off the train, Mutou," Bakura instructed. "And not another word," he added warningly.

The odd, mismatched pair finally made it to Ginmaru Apartments, thankfully with no incidents.

"Wow, Youtai-kun! This is where you live?" Yuugi grinned, looking up at the worn building. "Ooh, ooh! Let's go to your new place first!" He hopped up and down on the balls of his feet in his excitement.

"Lay off the caffeine, Mutou," Bakura snapped.

The two of them entered the elevator, and began their ascent up to the sixth floor.

Yuugi whistled a nonsense tune on the way up, noticeably restless. He pointed at the 'no smoking' sign sticker on the side. "Don't you ever think that it's silly that people put these signs in elevators? I mean, who'd be stupid enough to smoke in the elevator? It's so dangerous!"

Bakura suddenly found the button pad on the opposite side very interesting, and instead of commenting, stared very intensely at the lighted 'six' button.

"Speaking of which, Youtai-kun, you really ought to quit smoking. It's really bad for your health! Don't you wanna be like me? I mean, come on, people still say that I look like I'm in high school! It's because I don't go ad—"

"'Adding fucking years to your face'," Bakura finished through gritted teeth. "I know, Mutou. I know."

The painful ride finally ended, and Yuugi nearly shoved Bakura over as he raced out of the elevator. "Which one do you live in, Youtai-kun? Show me, show me!"

Bakura cursed the bubbly man under his breath, but took out his keys and walked over to his new apartment's front door.

When Yuugi rushed inside, Bakura took a sneak peek at the silent apartment now positioned right in next to his own door.

Distracted, he removed the key from the keyhole of his new apartment, and Bakura sauntered into the doorway, only mildly interested in the layout of his semi-new home.

"Oh! Oh!" Yuugi burst out from the kitchenette. "This is so much fun, Youtai-kun!" He smacked Bakura's arm with a friendly punch. "Old pals helping each other move!" He thumped a hand on his chest self-importantly. "Don't worry! I'll make this an unforgettable experience for you, Youtai-kun!"

"Yeah, yeah, right." Bakura kept his eyes on the closed neighboring door with a reproachful look.

"What are you looking at?" Yuugi inquired nosily. "Who lives over there?"

"Eh?" Bakura snapped out of his daze. "Nothing! Cut the crap, Mutou. You're here to move my stuff, not ask stupid questions. Get upstairs."

"Oh, right! Let's go, let's go!" His attention quickly overtaken with the idea of finally seeing the man's home, Yuugi forgot about his question and bounded out the hallway with glee.

Bakura gave Bakura Ryou's apartment one more glance before following.

Yuugi burst in as soon as Bakura unlocked 701's door, smile and eyes wide as he took in his surroundings. Then he frowned.

"Did you start packing without me, Youtai-kun?"

Did it look like it? His only coffee table and his worn sofa still sat forlornly in the center of his living room. His clothes, coupled with all his art supplies, were still everywhere; there was even what Bakura was quite certain was a sock hanging on the sofa's head rest. "…No."

Yuugi made a dramatic gasp, clutching his chest with a small fist. "What? You mean it always looks like this? It's so empty, Youtai-kun!" he scolded as the man closed the front door behind them.

'Oh, damn. If he's going to start going off about how I should find a fucking girlfriend—' Bakura thought.

"You have to find yourself a girlfriend, Youtai-kun!"

Crap.

"It'll fill the void in your heart that even me as your best friend can't!" Yuugi exclaimed dramatically.

"I had plenty of girlfriends before, Mutou."

"Any who lasted more than a year?"

"A _year_?"

"Fine. Half a year?"

"You're kidding, right?"

"Three months."

Silence.

"Two months."

There was more silence.

"One month— Oh, a _week_!"

"A week? Yeah, that happened once… Wait, no, I forgot. Record was only four days."

"I know you're just joshing me, Youtai-kun," Yuugi said, laughing. "That's a good one. Four days. Ahh, you're funny."

"I'm not."

Yuugi stared at Bakura's completely straight, and now annoyed, face. "Oh my gosh! You're really not!" Yuugi sounded horrified. "Doesn't it feel empty in there?"

"Newsflash. I don't care," Bakura grunted as he began tossing all his clothes into an empty shopping bag nearby.

"You're heartless, Youtai-kun!" Yuugi accused.

"How'd you know?" Bakura deadpanned. Giving up his treasure hunt for his clothes, he tossed the bag over into a corner and jerked a thumb over to his bedroom. "Move the futon downstairs."

Yuugi sighed loudly and stomped into the bedroom. A few moments later, he came back out into the living area space, practically buckling his knees from the size of the cotton mattress.

"Don't tell me you need help bringing a fucking mattress down, Mutou," Bakura warned.

Yuugi's face poked out from a side. "I can do anything," he huffed out weakly. "Because I'm voiced by Da—"

"—Dan Green, you mentioned, " Bakura said impatiently, holding out a firm palm to silence the man. "Just hurry up. I'm going to pack my work crap."

Yuugi wobbled unsteadily on his way out. Under Yuugi's breath, the other man could hear the spiky-haired young man mutter something that suspiciously sounded like "I come here to create life-long friendship memories, and I end up doing manual labor for a cold-hearted tyrant."

Bakura rolled his eyes, and began to haphazardly flinging random, small knick knacks into another shopping bag. Assembling enough bags for a trip down, Bakura gathered all the bags into his arms and shuffled down the staircase to the seventh floor.

Just as he was about to open the door leading from the stairs to the hallway, however, he saw Ryou entering the floor from the elevator with his briefcase and Kyouko in her school uniform. Cursing silently, Bakura immediately jumped back against the wall, and peered into the hall from the tiny, rectangular window at the door's side.

Ryou took a glance at the ajar door next to his own apartment as Kyouko trotted alongside him. As Bakura saw Ryou take out his keys, Yuugi came out of the new apartment, wiping his sweating brow with a hand.

Though Kyouko already went back inside, Ryou, who still stood outside, gave Yuugi a short, courteous bow, to which Yuugi, surprised at the formality, echoed.

Bakura scowled from his hiding place, though it was a rhetorical question to ask as to why Ryou was polite to others but not to him.

Ryou closed the door without a word behind him as Yuugi suddenly stood still in the hall with a small frown. At this opportune moment, Bakura pushed the side door open with an elbow, and pretended he had only just arrived.

"What the hell are you standing here for, Mutou? I still have a shit load of stuff to move."

Yuugi tapped his chin with a finger, frown still in place. "That guy who lives over there. He kind of looks familiar."

Bakura snorted. "What? Our resemblance to each other?"

Yuugi shook his head. "No, not that… Like I've definitely seen him before somewhere." He continued his chin tapping. "But where…?"

A sudden memory of Yuugi snatching his drawing of Ryou soared through Bakura's mind. "Shit! If he remembers that, then I'm screwed!"

"If I remember _what_, Youtai-kun?"

Damn! Why did he always say his most secretive thoughts out loud for Yuugi to hear?

"Nothing! Just get back up there!"

It was approximately ten o'clock by the time the pair finished the move. Exhausted, Bakura waved a gesture of good-bye to the still-giddy Yuugi, who could only continually babble on about the wonderful memories they made that day.

Bakura got up his sofa and took a long stretch as he walked around his new apartment. Flipping open the light switch, Bakura yawned as he shuffled into the small space equipped as a kitchen. Taking one of the beers he had to fight Yuugi from disposing of, he entered his new bedroom and pushed the sliding glass door at the far end aside to step out onto the balcony.

Ahh. What a nice March night. It was already nearing the middle of the month, and tonight's night air was especially refreshing.

Taking a thirsty gulp, he momentarily stopped drinking when he noticed something out of his peripheral vision. He set down the aluminum can on the railing as he realized that he now had the perfect view of Bakura Ryou's room.

Bakura blinked, scarcely believing his good luck. He had never bothered looking out from his old balcony to the other side because no one lived beside him. There was a large space separating his balcony from Ryou's, but that hardly hindered him from having a pretty good view of the other's room if he leaned out at a specific enough angle.

He kept to the shadows as he saw Ryou dressed in his usual cotton button-down and slacks pull out a small mattress with a bright floral print onto the floor. He was wearing his gloves. Nothing new.

Then Kyouko bounded in in pale pink pajamas with some type of bunny-design on them, glasses askew.

She burrowed into her mattress, grinning up at Ryou, who smiled meekly at her. Bakura observed her saying something that he couldn't hear from where he was standing.

He looked at Ryou, who leaned down hesitantly. Kyouko suddenly beamed, lifted her head up, and seemed to try to embrace Ryou with her tiny arms. But then Ryou suddenly stiffened at the incoming proximity of the little girl, and jerked back from the out stretched arms.

Quickly whisking her glasses off her face from that odd angle, he stood up abruptly and hastily placed them onto the cabinet nearby.

And then he saw Ryou walked quickly over to the door, opening it. Bakura saw Ryou mouth a 'good night' to the girl, who still sat, arms slowly descending to her sides.

Bakura had a gnawing suspicion that the girl was probably still wondering why she did not get a goodnight kiss or hug after the lights went out.

* * *

The next morning, Bakura had the misfortune of introducing himself as Ryou's new next door neighbor in what he would consider one of the worst ways possible.

He was just locking up behind him when the door of 601 suddenly flung open and Kyouko rushed out.

He heard Ryou's voice, frantic and a bit rushed from inside as the little girl faced the open door, wringing at her school uniform skirt with small hands. As usual, her entire appearance looked a bit disheveled, as if she had been dressing a doll, with herself as the toy.

She took notice of Bakura, who was quite surprised at the sudden out-of-character nature of Ryou, who always looked unruffled in the public eye's view.

"Good morning," she greeted.

"'Morning," Bakura answered shortly. He paused. "What the hell's going on in there?"

Kyouko shifted her weight back and forth on her feet, eyes on the ground. "The alarm clock broke and Daddy can't find his car keys. He says I'm going to be late for school."

Bakura snorted at that, but then thought silently for a moment. "Hey, kid. Is he your actual fath—"

"What the devil were the keys doing in the umbrella rack—? I never pla—" Ryou stopped his sentence, along with his movement out to the hall, as he noticed Bakura standing beside Kyouko. "_You_!" he exclaimed angrily.

"What the fuck did I do now?" Bakura snapped, miffed at the tone. "I didn't hide your keys in any umbrella rack."

"Daddy..." Kyouko began in a waver.

"Quiet, Kyouko-chan," Ryou cut in brusquely. Kyouko shut her mouth. "I thought you agreed to stay away!" He pointed a finger angrily at Bakura's new apartment. "Are you living there?" he demanded.

Look innocent. Look innocent. Make this look like it is a complete coincidence.

"Hey, that was just a freakish fluke," Bakura lied easily. "I wanted to move from the seventh floor, and somehow, I just ended up here. I didn't know it was gonna be next to you. Really."

"That boy, then, who was here before— one of your friends…" Ryou started chopping up his sentences in seething anger.

"Mutou? Hey, he might not look it, but he's already in his twenties—"

"I don't want to hear any of your ridiculous excuses right now!" Ryou snapped. Kyouko made a worried whine, hopping from one foot to the other now, still fisting her skirt. Ryou gave her a quick look, and then returned to face Bakura. "Don't you _dare_ come near me or my daughter with your vile stench of cigarettes." He clenched a gloved fist at his last word, spitting it out with encountered acidity. "Or you'll be _sorry_."

Bakura raised his palms out in a pushing manner in mock-defeat.

"Come, Kyouko-chan," Ryou murmured under his breath, waving his hand toward the elevator while shooting Bakura one last dirty look.

Kyouko opened her mouth to say something again, but after noticing Ryou's deadly expression, clamped her lips shut again, and followed her father to the elevator.

Bakura started in after them— he had to ride the elevator, too— but the same look momentarily paralyzed him in his tracks.

Kyouko gave him a timid good bye out of her father's line of vision as the doors closed.

* * *

Bakura spent the next week's nights observing Ryou and the kid from his balcony. He made sure to keep out of sight, though; an actual restraining order was not on his to-have list.

Ryou ignored him whenever he happened to be around elsewhere, though Kyouko would always give him a happy wave. She was apparently forbidden to speak to him, for she never said anything to him, especially in her father's presence.

One warm late March night, after witnessing the routine of Ryou awkwardly tucking Kyouko into bed, Bakura stayed in his spot at the balcony.

It's been nearly a week and a half since his move. He's managed to scrape together exactly zero amount of information. Come to think of it, how the hell was moving down here supposed to help him figure out the true relationship between the supposed blood-related father and daughter?

Sighing, Bakura took another swig of his beer. Another shitty plan.

Well, at least he gets to see Ryou more often without any repercussion—

"Mister!"

Bakura choked at his beer and whipped his head to the direction the voice was coming from.

"Here! Here!" A small arm bobbed up and down from view. "It's Kyouko!"

Bakura slowly craned his neck over. Sure enough, it was Ryou's supposed daughter.

"…What do you want?"

"I wanted to know why you've been looking into Daddy and my room for the last bunch of days," the girl said innocently. " Did you lose a toy over here?" she asked in a helpful tone.

Bakura mentally cringed. Shit! He's been found out.

"Nah... Wait. Does your dad know about me?"

"Nope. 'Cause he gets mad when he sees you, so I thought he might not want to know."

"Smart kid," Bakura grinned. Kyouko beamed at him. Then she gasped and smacked a hand over her mouth. She glanced about her fearfully, but then spoke again in a whisper. "Are you smoking right now?"

"What? No." It was true, Bakura had been laying off the cigarettes for the past few hours already. His cough had slightly improved since.

"Oh, good, 'cause Daddy said I can't talk to people with ciggies."

"Hmm. He told you why?"

"He said it makes people sick," she said simply. "Mister, even though Daddy's mad at you, are you Daddy's friend?" she asked suddenly.

"Uh… sure."

Liar, liar, pants on fire.

Kyouko's eyes widened. "Then do you know all his secrets?"

"Uh…maybe…some of them?"

Kyouko jumped up and down quickly. "Did he make you swear that you can't tell anyone?"

Where the hell was this conversation going?

"No."

"Ooh! Then can you tell me why—" Kyouko looked about again, and lowered her voice. "Can you tell me why he doesn't like me?"

"What the fu—" Hold up. He was speaking to a little girl here, not Mutou. "Why would you think that, little girl?"

Ugh. Drop the 'little girl' part. And never say it again.

There was a faint scraping sound, like Kyouko was shuffling her feet against each other. "I don't know. He doesn't like to hang around me that much. And he ever kisses me good night."

"Ryou's just not used to it, kid. He'll get better with it." Why was he defending the asshole?

"Really? Is that his secret?" Her voice sounded hopeful.

"Uh…One of them."

"Okay!" She grinned again, showing all her tiny baby teeth. Then she leaned forward. "Since you told me one of Daddy's secrets, I'll tell you one of mine, too, mister!"

"Huh."

"Remember that time when I was going to be late for school 'cause of the alarm clock and 'cause Daddy couldn't find his keys?"

"Yeah, I remember. So?"

Kyouko cupped her hand over the side of her mouth, as if to keep her next words from being overheard by the night. "Daddy thought that the clock fell off the table by mistake, but it didn't." She nodded with wide eyes seriously.

"…I'm not catching on, kid."

"Truth is… I broke it. I hid Daddy's keys with the umbrellas, too."

He was obviously supposed to go somewhere with this. "Why?"

"'Cause I didn't want to go to school. And I didn't want Daddy to go to work, either. I thought that maybe we could both stay at home instead, and that maybe he'll play games with me. And that maybe later he'll get to like me better."

Oh. For some reason, though that confession had hardly any common sense to it, Bakura still felt a touch of sympathy for the girl.

"But you can't tell this to Daddy! He'll get mad at me…" She suddenly looked fearful. "He might not w…" Kyouko's voice died out without finishing her sentence.

Bakura shifted uncomfortably at the gauche silence. Then he remembered the whole point of his plan. "Hey, kid. Is Ryou your actual dad? Meaning blood rel—"

"_What_ are you two doing?" a hiss demanded.

Both Bakura and Kyouko turned their heads to face Ryou, who stood at the glass doors behind the little girl.

Oh, shit.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

Ahh! Thought I forgot about Bakura's picture of Ryou, eh? Not so easily! I own none of the anime that I mentioned in this chapter.

Dan Green's bootleg cameo! And Eric Stuart's, too! As any fan knows, Dan Green is the talent behind Yami Yuugi's and Yuugi's voice. Eric Stuart is the voice of Kaiba in Yugioh!, as well as Brock and James from Pokémon, come to think of it.

I believe it was Yami Yuugi that said something along the lines of "I can do anything because I'm voiced by Dan Green" in **YGOTAS**, but seeing that Yami Yuugi is a video game character in here, there is Yuugi to take his spot.


	6. Gift

Youtai Bakura was pretty sure he's never seen Bakura Ryou quite this angry before.

"I _told_ you to stay away!" Ryou shouted, storming up to the side of the balcony so that Bakura was right in front of him. "What is _wrong_ with you? Why can't you leave us alone?"

The man was shaking violently, hands clenched stiffly into fists at his side. If he wasn't wearing his gloves, it would have been quite possible to rupture the skin with the sheer pressure his fingernails were digging into the flesh.

For a moment, Bakura froze. Ryou looked awful. From up close, Bakura could see how his pale skin had now adopted an almost paper-like quality to it, and how the shadows under his eyes made the man appear as if it took every last ounce of energy to be standing in front of him.

What the hell _happened _to him?

Ryou whirled around to turn to his daughter. "Kyouko!" he bit out angrily. His daughter jumped, clutching the sides of her pajamas as she fearfully looked at her father's face. "Didn't I tell you not to talk to him?" he snapped, pointing an accusing finger at the speechless Bakura. "Why did you disobey your father?"

Kyouko's lower lip began to wobble at the sharpness of his tone. "I-I… Daddy, you said not to talk to smokers…" Her voice started cracking. "Bu-but h-he wasn't smo-smoking, Daddy—"

"Speak up!" Ryou said sharply. "I can't hear you."

Kyouko shrank her form into a small ball in the corner, ducking her head into her arms. "I sa-said that h-he—"

"I told you to speak up!" Ryou shouted.

Kyouko's voice finally broke in with a gasp, and she began to bawl loudly. She covered her face with her sleeves, sobbing in short, panicked spurts.

Ryou gave a short gasp, and took a stride over to his daughter. His arms were out in a cautious manner, and he was even in mid-crouch.

But then he stopped, as if he didn't know how to pacify her—as if the idea of hugging his own child to apologize was repulsive.

And that seriously pissed Bakura off.

Finding his voice again, Bakura sprang forward. "What the _fuck_ are you yelling at the kid for? It's not her fault!" he snarled. "You didn't have to scare her like that!"

Bakura seriously contemplated leaping over the gap between their two balconies to give Ryou a piece of mind. He couldn't stand how the man could just agitatedly stand there, hopeless, as his daughter cried and cried.

He especially couldn't stand how Ryou could have possibly evaded the truth from the person who possibly needed to know it most.

"Answer me, you bastard! How the _fuck _can you keep her from this? How the fuck are you planning on raising her like _that_?" Bakura screamed. "You—"

"You understand _nothing_," Ryou interrupted.

"What the hell is there to understand?" Bakura screeched. He was ignored.

"Go back inside, Kyouko," Ryou, turning to his daughter, said in a loud, but toneless voice. "Right now."

Still sniffling, she hung her head in a nod and got up. Ryou followed her to the glass doors and saw her into the bedroom.

"Hey, hey, _hey_! Come back here!" Bakura bellowed, flailing an arm in the air in a swiping motion. "I'm not fucking through with you yet!"

Ryou once again ignored him. He was just about to follow Kyouko inside, when Bakura stopped him with one more line.

"You know you're an _awful_ father?"

Ryou turned his head slowly, and gave a cold look over to Bakura. "_You understand nothing_!" he shouted again, flares of anger bursting in his voice. "Absolutely _nothing_!" Then he calmed, and it was like the outburst never happened. "Mind your own fucking business," he spat out.

"You need _help_, Bakura Ryou!" Bakura screeched. "You hear me?"

Without another word, Ryou closed the glass door behind him, leaving Bakura to face an empty balcony. When the former drew the curtains over the glass doors, that broke whatever fine line there was stopping Bakura from going ballistic.

Haphephobia wasn't something to ridicule Ryou with, as he had previously thought and exploited.

This wasn't fucking funny at all.

"_You need help_!" he repeated in a scream to no one. He gripped onto the balcony side and leaned over the gap to continue shouting into the curtain-drawn room. "There is something seriously _fucking wrong with you_!"

Silence. The curtains didn't even stir in the slightest.

"Are you there? You—you—" Bakura couldn't think of a suitable insult.

"Hey! What the hell is going on up there?" a neighbor hollered from a few floors below.

Bakura growled, and leaned over the balcony. "Shut the fuck up!" he shouted back. "This doesn't even concern you!"

Storming back into his bedroom, Bakura slid the glass door shut with a careless shove, and kicked the nearby dresser for good measure.

"_This is none of your fucking business." _Bakura mimicked Ryou's voice out loud.

Tearing off his shirt as he stalked over to the bathroom, he pulled the cold water knob of his small sink as far as it could go.

'Well, it really isn't,' a voice told him matter-of-factly. Bakura Ryou, in the end, was simply a neighbor with troubles, just like every other person on the whole damn planet. What gave Bakura the right to interfere? He had his own problems—butting into others' concerns was the most annoying one. Ugh, was Yuugi having that large of an influence on him? Scooping up some of the freezing cold water, he splashed his face with it repeatedly.

He was sick of this. Absolutely sick. Sick of being yelled at, sick of being shot those dirty glances at, sick of barbed words.

Bakura didn't care if other people did that to him, just Ryou.

And the worst of it all was that he couldn't understand why that was. Bakura exhaled angrily as he grabbed a towel off the rack and began drying his face with it.

He had been purposely trying to get a rise out of the man just for laughs because he had found the man intriguing— so didn't he bring this all onto himself?

But then it wasn't for fun anymore. He had tried to apologize, didn't he?

'You broke the deal, though,' the same voice reminded him.

Yeah. Now why the hell did he do that again?

'Because you were bored again, remember? And once you found out he had a kid, you _just_ had to go dig yourself a deeper hole. And _now_ look where it got you.'

Why did he find it so important to know whether the two were blood related or not? It wouldn't have made a difference in his own life either way.

So _why_?

There it was again; the unexplainable need to burrow into Bakura Ryou's affairs.

"_Mind your fucking business," _Ryou's voice repeated again in his mind. Just now did the weight of those words really sink in.

Bakura threw the towel onto the sink's side, scowling to himself.

That was insulting, how Ryou had so crudely said that to him. That, and "_You understand nothing._"

Well, _fine_. If he understood nothing, and if it wasn't any of his business, what the hell was the point of raising his blood pressure to try and communicate with that man?

In his anger, Bakura promised himself that he is going to drop this whole Bakura Ryou business.

Whether it worked or not was a different matter. He seriously doubted it would—the one thing that the man knew about himself were his limits— but it certainly made himself feel better.

* * *

Avoiding Ryou turned out to be a rather daunting task.

It felt odd, which wasn't surprising, seeing that this was the first time Bakura had ever tried to purposely avoid any person for a prolonged period of time. Except for maybe the police.

His mind was distracted with such thoughts as he left his apartment.

Jounouchi was there in the hall, fumbling with a bunch of suitcases. "Hey, Youtai!" the gangly blond acknowledged with a smile.

Bakura looked at him. "You going somewhere?" he asked dully, motioning to the luggage with a nod of his head.

Jounouchi managed a laugh. "Yeah. A two week long vacation to the tropics. Didn't really wanna trek all the way there, but…"

Bakura gave him a puzzled glance. "Then why the hell are you going?"

Jounouchi sighed and shrugged. "It's almost impossible to reason with the guy I'm going with…Oh well."

"Hmm. Glad _someone_'s having fun," Bakura muttered under his breath as the pair entered the elevator.

"What was that?"

"Nothing you need to know." He paused. What were people supposed to say to travelers? "Have a good time." Yeah. That was it.

Jounouchi grinned. "Yup." Then he got a distracted look. "Just hope he won't be on that stupid laptop of his the entire time…"

"Hm?"

The blond shook his head. "Nah, it's nothing." There was a short silence. "You don't have to answer if you don't wanna, Youtai, but what the hell was going on between you and Bakura last night? It got pretty loud."

Bakura shrugged. "The usual."

Jounouchi frowned at the nonchalant answer. "I thought you guys made up already."

The white-haired man scowled. Yuugi really ought to meet this guy. They would be best of friends, thinking so much alike.

"It's _fine_," Bakura snapped. "Drop it." '_Before I start flaming that bastard and can't stop_,' he added darkly to himself_._

"Okay, okay," Jounouchi apologized. "Sorry I asked."

After bidding the man a hasty farewell, Bakura left the lobby before he could explode and begin ranting about Ryou to the blond.

He hated himself for subconsciously sneaking a look toward the mailboxes in a hope of finding Ryou there as he stalked out of his building.

Well, for the record, he wasn't there.

'It makes sense that he wasn't there,' Bakura thought as he rode the silent morning train to Kaiba Corp, still thinking about the man.

Bakura Ryou had to drop off his kid at school before going to work. That meant that he would have to leave the building a lot earlier to get to both on time. And it happened to be that Domino Elementary School was a far distance from Satou Prep, even by car. Hell, even Kaiba Corp was closer to the damn school.

'Must be pretty difficult to pick her up', Bakura mulled silently. Ryou would need to drive all the way across the city to get his child after work. By the time he gets to the school, it would be six thirty or so. And then he'd need to drive all the way back. Did Ryou have a sitter to take care of Kyouko for those few hours after school—

Bakura smacked himself with his bag.

'Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. 'Bakura Ryou is none of your damn concern', he told himself firmly. 'Who cares how long it takes for that sorry, pathetic excuse of a father to drive his kid around?' Not him, that's for sure. 'I have my own damn problems to be thinking about,' he muttered to himself.' If I can just stop myself from butting into Ryou's, then I finally be able to live a stress-free life.'

A _boring_, stress-free life.

_'No_, just stress-free', he lied to himself.

Right. A stress-free life.

He used that as a sutra as he continued his way off to work.

* * *

When he reached the looming, electronic doors of Kaiba Corp, Bakura had almost completely convinced himself that living "a stress-free life" was a better option that whatever the hell kind of relationship he had managed to make with one Bakura Ryou.

Who would have known that this plan would have the shortest plan of all his half-baked decisions?

As it usually did, the whole thing fell to pieces because of Yuugi. Big surprise.

It started out with the lunch break.

"Psst!" Bakura looked up from his computer to see Yuugi waving a frantic arm in his direction.

"What, Mutou?" he asked flatly.

"I heard that Kaiba-kun isn't in today! Let's go out for lunch!"

Bakura's eyebrows shot up in piqued interest. Then he scowled. "Bullshit. Kaiba took a day off a couple of weeks ago. He wouldn't take another one so damn soon."

Yuugi shook his head impatiently. "The secretary told me herself! He went off to Bermuda until next-next Monday!" He paused momentarily, dreamy smile in place. "I wonder if it's a nice place to vacation to. What's in Bermuda?"

"A triangle," Bakura muttered snidely.

"Huh?"

"…Forget it."

"Well, either way, Youtai-kun, we mustn't let go of such a good opportunity! We need to go out for lunch!"

"Not interested."

"Oh, come on! You're no fun at all. I heard that a new Burger World opened up around here—"

"I'm especially not going to leave to eat some damn fast food. Aren't you always the one going on about health and shit?"

"Not if it gets in the way of a beautiful friendship bonding experience, Youtai-kun!" Yuugi pleaded. "Come on, please? For your super special awesome best friend?"

"_Self-proclaimed _super spec—," Bakura began. He gave an inward groan, clutching his forehead. "Whatever. If it'll make you shut up."

"Yippee!" Yuugi jumped out of his seat, doing a short victory dance around their desks.

"Stop that!"

It was a short walk over to Burger World. As Yuugi whistled a nonsense tune while reading from the Ki—whoa, it really was the Kids' Menu— Bakura stared dully out the window.

This was pathetic.

"Oh, look! They sell quarter pounders here! Hey! It's in French, too… 'Royale—with Cheese'?" Yuugi's eyebrows knitted together in confusion. "Sounds more like English to me... Hmm, I wonder what they call the Super Special Awesome Burger in France…"

Bakura shot his colleague a look of utter confusion.

"Let's eat over there, Daddy!"

Bakura immediately sat up straight at the sound of the familiar voice. He whirled his head around to face the direction from which it was coming from.

"There! There!" Kyouko was bouncing up and down as she pointed over to a bunch of stools on the opposite side of the small restaurant. "I want to sit on one of those!"

Ryou was standing next to her, holding a bunch of bags crammed with what seemed to be a bunch of toys. He gave a faint nod at his child, and followed her over to the stools.

Bakura craned his neck, nearing falling out of his seat in the booth as he spied Kyouko grabbing onto an empty stool and trying to hoist herself up.

As expected, Ryou did not try to help her, but Bakura did notice an uneasy expression on his face, like he was afraid that she might fall in her attempt.

He also noticed a relieved, genuine smile when Kyouko finally succeeded in sitting on her chair. She smacked the plastic stool closest to her, beaming up at her father. "Sit next to me, Daddy!"

Ryou did, surprisingly. He gently sat the bags down on the floor next to him, and handed her a menu, which she snatched eagerly out of his gloved hand.

"Daddy, let's eat the same thing!" she said excitedly.

Ryou gave a short, imperceptible nod. "Alright," he said softly. "If you want to."

"Youtai-kun! Earth to Youtai-kun!" Yuugi's arm yanked him back onto his seat.

"What?" Bakura snapped angrily.

"What are you staring at over there?"

Shit. Lie! _Lie_!

"Err— Saw a hot waiter—_ess," _he amended. "Hot waitress," he repeated hastily.

Yuugi gasped. "No way! Youtai-kun is interested in someone? Where? Where? Lemmee see!"

Damn it! That was an awful lie. Bakura hastily pushed Yuugi back into his seat. "Never mind. She already went into the back."

"Oh," Yuugi sighed disappointedly. "Oh, well."

After they ordered, Bakura was hesitant on sneaking a peek over at the pair again. He did, however, keep an ear out on their conversation.

"…Can we go to the park afterwards, Daddy?"

"If you want to," the man said again softly.

Got it.

Wait. He had told himself to drop the Bakura Ryou thing. Damn it, he has to hold his mouth shut—

"Mutou. How much more time before we gotta get back to the office?"

Too late.

"Hmm?" Yuugi looked up from his cheeseburger. He looked at his watch. "About half an hour more, maybe?" he muffled out through ballooned cheeks.

"Good. We should go to the park afterwards."

He didn't think it was funny when Yuugi nearly choked on his burger at that, and how the shorter man had to make such a display of chugging down half a soda before answering him breathlessly.

"The _park_, Youtai-kun? _Why_?"

Yeah. Why?

"Uhh, for that..what-the-hell-was-it— that friendship bonding experience crap."

Yuugi's eyes turned wide. "Really?"

"…Yeah. So hurry up, would you?"

They were out of there in under three minutes. Yuugi immediately ran for the swings, much to Bakura's embarrassment. So much for that bonding shit. Whatever. The latter opted to sit on one of the benches in a shaded area instead, and kept surveillance over the entrance.

He wasn't disappointed. Ten minutes in on stake-out, Kyouko ran into the park, with Ryou close behind. She ran toward the slide in the jungle gym, and Bakura cursed under his breath when Ryou glanced in a puzzled manner at Yuugi on the swings nearby, as if he was unsure if he had met him before.

His suspicions were confirmed when Ryou suddenly looked about the park with a dark scowl on his face. Damn Yuugi for having that hair! Bakura quickly ducked deeper into the shadows, and luckily, escaped notice.

Ryou was apparently satisfied at the supposed lack-of-Bakura's-presence, and chose to sit on a bench close by to where Kyouko was playing. Looking rather uncomfortable and keeping his bags around him, Ryou sat ruler-straight, with his gloved hands clasped over each other.

"Daddy, Daddy! Play with me!' Kyouko called out, swinging around a pole and waving to her father.

Ryou simply shook his head with a strained smile. Bakura noticed as Kyouko pouted, noticeably dissatisfied. She gave up on trying to draw her father to her, though, and ran off.

As time passed, Bakrua watched as most of Ryou's discomfort slowly ebbed away into relaxation as the latter observed his child playing, and couldn't help but give a small, unexplainable smile to himself. Aww, it was pretty touching—

The smile quickly morphed into a scowl.

All this fresh air must be messing with his brain oxygen supply... Yeah, that was it.

Bakura looked at his cell phone. It was about time to return to Kaiba Corp. Quickly giving Yuugi a call on his phone to get his ass off the swings, he got up and stretched. There was still a tug of something that Bakura couldn't place, though, on Ryou's expression.

Taking a look back, he noticed with surprise that Ryou had disappeared from his seat on the bench. "What the hell…?"

"Oh! Oh! Youtai-kun! They sell ice cream in that shop right there!" Yuugi bounced into his line of vision, pointing excitedly at a brightly painted shop at the corner. "Buy me one? I didn't bring all my money out with me."

"_What_? No! How old do you think you are?" He tried to shove Yuugi away, still craning his neck to find Ryou.

"Please! Please! Please!" Yuugi pleaded.

"I said '_n_—'," Bakura began. Then he recognized Ryou's thin form in the front of the small crowd forming in front of the shop. "What the hell—" he breathed out loud in shock.

When the hell did Ryou start voluntarily putting himself in places where there was so much people?

"What? Come on, Youtai-kun! Please! Please! Ple—"

"Damn it, fine!" Bakua tossed a couple of bills at his childish coworker. "Hurry up!"

Yuugi rushed away with the money towards the small crowd just as Ryou emerged from it with a single, small chocolate cone. Bakura stared in amazement as the man strode quickly over to the jungle gym.

"Kyouko-chan," he heard the man call out timidly. "Kyouko-chan."

Kyouko peered over the bars with a small pout on her face, looking at her father with her large, magnified eyes. "What is it, Daddy?"

"Daddy bought you ice cream," Ryou said softly.

Kyouko's face broke out into s bright smile. "Really?" Ryou held up the cone so she could see. "Thank you, Daddy!" She jumped off the jungle gym, and ran up to her father with her arms outstretched in a hug.

But then she dropped her arms when she saw Ryou back step sharply. And there was that small pout again.

"E-eat it now before it melts," Ryou managed. He held out the cone for her to take, which she did, careful not to let their fingers touch.

"Okay."

Bakura watched as Ryou nervously brushed his palms back and forth against his coat. "How is it?"

Kyouko grinned. "Good." She thrust up the ice cream, waving it around in his face. "Do you want a bite, too, Daddy?"

"N-no. It's alright." Ryou kept his eyes on the ground. "I'll buy you one everyday if you're happy, Kyouko-chan. Daddy can drive you here every day after school and on the weekends—I could change my schedule at work so that I can pick you up earlier— " His voice waned to a whisper from the uncharacteristic outburst. "If you want me to…"

Kyouko looked up with ice cream smeared all over her chin. "Okay! You said so yourself, Daddy! You have to pick me up everyday at three! No more being late! Then I'll never be sad!"

She giggled as Ryou twitched a small, weak smile.

Yuugi tapped impatiently on Bakura's arm. "Time to go, Youtai-kun!"

"Huh?" Bakura jerked his eyes away from the father and daughter pair to face Yuugi, who was balancing in his other hand a large, double coned strawberry ice cream with heaps of sprinkles mounted on top.

"Shit, Mutou," he warned. "You better eat all of that before we get inside the building!"

Yuugi waved his hand in a dismissive motion. "Relax! I can finish this!"

Bakura seriously doubted it. Regardless, Yuugi still owed him for however much that monstrosity the former was slurping at, cost.

"Come on, let's get a move on," the younger man said.

As the pair walked out of the park, Bakura turned once more to Ryou and his daughter in time to catch one last glimpse of Ryou holding out a napkin for Kyouko to wipe her face with.

* * *

Ryou was true to his word, as it were; without fail, in rain or shine, the man would daily drive his kid to the park and buy her ice cream. Bakura would know, he was there everyday after school for the next two weeks simply observing them.

He was able to tell his sub-conscious that his daily rounds to the ice cream store was a way to relax—sort of how he did in the elevator. Of course, he couldn't smoke in the shop; that would be the sure-fire way of getting caught by Ryou, not to mention management, if nothing else.

Not like a man sitting tucked away in a corner of an ice cream parlor staring at a little kid and her father was suspicious at all.

Of course not.

Bakura noticed that Ryou would never buy himself ice cream, just the kid. He would give her a new flavor to try everyday, from one that was topped with chocolate chip cookies to a rainbow one that put Yuugi's hair to shame.

Every time, Kyouko would obediently try the new flavor, but it seemed that none pleased her too much. And it was evident, from what Bakura could sneakily observe on Ryou's face.

Bakura himself preferred vanilla-the plainest of the lot. Funnily, though, Ryou never gave Kyouko that one to try. He supposed it was because he wanted the most expensive ones for her.

Bakura couldn't help but feel the slightest bit sympathetic for the man.

"_Ryou isn't that crappy of a father—damn, I was a bit out of line for saying that to him_—" Bakura made a face at the thought as he rode home on the silent train that Friday. He clutched at his head. "_Shit! What the hell am I saying? That was _way_ out of line!_"

It wasn't Ryou's fault that he was uncomfortable being around a child, especially when the fore-mentioned child was such a touchy-feely kind of kid. Wasn't he trying his damnedest to try to make up for his short-coming? Buying her toys, taking her to the park, getting her ice cream every single day…

Reminding himself of that short conversation he overheard that day warmed a little spot in Bakura's gut he didn't know he had. Actually, it was a little higher up than the gut— Was that his heart—?

Shit, whatever—It wasn't fair to Kyouko to have a father, biologically-related or not didn't even matter in this case, who had a problem like that. All that materialistic crap wasn't going to make up for the fact that her own dad was afraid of receiving her hugs and kisses.

She deserved better than that.

And Ryou… regardless of whether she really was his flesh and blood, he ought to have more out of a kick from being a father. Not like Bakura had any similar experience— he wasn't even an uncle— but the man felt it right there in his heart—_gut_—it was supposed to be _gut_— that Ryou also deserved better than what he had at the present with his daughter.

He was the only one that knew about Ryou's haphephobia, other than the man with it, himself.

Wasn't it his duty to clear this up for them? A hopeful voice that sounded awfully too much like himself rang out with that suggestion in the inner hubbub.

'_No_,' an impatient voice defended. 'It's not your duty to do a damn thing. Shit! You said you weren't gonna mess with him anymore! You said it yourself! Why the hell are you so indecisive?'

Bakura exhaled.

Crap. If he dug into the Bakura Ryou mess with this new development in his whimsical ways, he'd be feeding his own problem of being unable to ignore Ryou again…

'But, _hey_,' the Voice-of-Urges reasoned slyly. If he was able to fix the problem, then wouldn't that mean he would no longer have anything to tinker around with? And wouldn't that mean that he would drop Bakura Ryou's business permanently… by default?

'That's complete _bullshit_! You're _completely_ twisting the argument around!' the impatient Bakura screamed angrily. 'How the hell does that even make _sense_—'

Both the division of Bakura that won the inner-argument and Bakura himself silently suffocated the loser with a mental-pillow.

"This will be the last time," he told himself finally.

Leaning back, Bakrua relaxed against the seat with a familiar grin on his face.

For once, it looked like he could finally be able to hold through all the way with a plan.

* * *

It was sunny that Sunday when Plan D—or was it E— got put onto the playing field.

Bakura had Ryou's schedule all figured out by this time. Bakura had been calling in 'sick' on weekends simply for the purpose of sitting in the ice cream shop all day to wait for the arrival of Ryou and his kid.

Kaiba was going to be back on Monday. This was his last chance to watch the pair.

At exactly 3:27, Bakura looked up from his own bowl of vanilla scoops to gaze intently at the door. As predicted, it was at the precise moment when Kyouko trudged almost unwillingly into the shop with her father right behind her.

The two of them sat down in front of a window. Bakura innocently leaned forward from his spot to take a listen:

"Do you want to try this one today, Kyouko-chan?" Bakura heard Ryou murmur lowly to his daughter, pointing at a brightly printed menu. Kyouko looked at the menu, and nodded slowly.

"Okay."

Ryou looked uncomfortable. "You don't have to eat it if you don't want to, Kyouko-chan. Which one do you want?"

Kyouko leaned forward, a determined look in her eyes. "I want to know what's your favorite, Daddy." She moved to grab for her father's free hand resting on the table between them.

Ryou twitched as he involuntarily leaned back, yanking his hand away from reach. "I-I don't have one, Kyouko-chan. I never ate ice cream when I was a child."

"No way!" Kyouko brushed away his feeble response with a wild shake of her head. "I know you must have eaten at least one! Didn't your daddy and mommy buy you any—"

"Kyouko-chan! Just choose one!" Ryou suddenly snapped sharply.

Kyouko jumped at the ever-disquieting tone of her father's angry-voice. Her eyes began to water almost immediately.

Ryou's porcelain mask of anger shattered at the distraught child. "I'm so sorry, Kyouko-chan…! I didn't mean to…" He grabbed a few napkins from the aluminum dispenser and held them out for her to use. "Here… Wipe your tears…"

She didn't take them, and continued to sniffle, instead.

"Shh… you promised me you wouldn't be sad anymore, Kyouko-cha—"

"_Coming through_!" Bakura plopped himself right next to Kyouko's spot in the small booth, sliding his ice cream right in front of him.

Ryou's expression of distress quickly got overtaken by annoyance. "You—"

Bakura held out a hand to silence him. "_I_," he said loudly, turning to Kyouko. "...found out something really important about your dad." He paused for dramatic effect. "You know what that is, kid?"

Kyouko stared at him, and shook her head. She wiped away her tears from the corner of her eye with a sleeve. "What is it?" she asked eagerly in a hiccup.

Ryou's eyes darted from his daughter to the suddenly grinning odd man sitting next to her. "You don't have a right to tell her anyth—"

Bakura held up his palm again. He hunched over the table, weaving his fingers together at the tips as he balanced his elbows on the wood. "I found out what your dad needs most… besides you, kid," he said, addressing the last part to Kyouko with a wave of his hand. "You ever realized what your dad needs?"

"A hug?" she asked hopefully.

"A wha—? No, wait, yes, I suppose he needs that, too. We'll get up to there—"

"A kiss?"

"…Let's think of something _I_ can give him—"

"You can give Daddy a kiss. I don't mind!"

"…I'll pass on that offer. What I was thinking of w—"

"_Are you done_?" Both Bakura and Kyouko silenced themselves as Ryou glared at the other man. "What are you even _doing_ here?"

"Helping."

"_What_?"

"What I said before," Bakura elaborated simply. "You know, last month. On the balcony." He waved a lax hand at the memory. "You need help."

Kyouko tugged on Bakura's arm. "What do you mean, mister? What kind of help?" she questioned enthusiastically.

"I don't see how you sitting here after repeatedly being told not to bother us counts as help—" Ryou began rudely.

"What your dad needs is more company, kid." Bakura said matter-of-factly. "Once he gets more used to people, he won't be such a jacka— so uncomfortable with them anymore."

"Really?" Kyouko asked, a bit dubiously. Ryou continued staring flabbergasted at Bakura, speechless. "Are you sure?" she asked.

"Damn right I'm sure." Bakura eased himself back onto his seat. "So, because I'm such a kind person, I'll sacrifice myself to make that happen." He drummed his fingers lightly against the table. "I'll simply hang out with your father every single day, until he _gets_ used to it. And every time he gets on one of his mood swings, you and I'll be there to sort him out, kid."

Kyouko gasped, and clapped her hands together in excited applause.

Bakura grinned, and glanced over to the man sitting in front of him. "What do you think of that, Ryou?"

* * *

**Author's Note:**

Finally! Development in the BXR relationship! References in this chapter center in Burger World. Both the "Royale with Cheese" and Yuugi's question "I wonder what they call the Super Special Awesome Burger (in France) "are examples.

Bakura's 'Bermuda Triangle' joke was a very random one, I've got to say so myself. No one seems to get it, though... You know... the infamous Bermuda Triangle!

Wink, wink, nudge, nudge at the "waiter—ess" blunder? And hey, there will come the day when a kiss from Bakura will happen! (probably)


	7. Withdrawal

"_What do you think of that, Ryou?"_

There was a pregnant pause. "...I think that you're _drunk_," the other man finally gritted out.

"Well, you thought wrong, then," Bakura quipped. "Come on, Ryou. Be a little more serious, would you? For your _kid_. I'm doing all of this for _her_, you know."

Ryou flinched a bit at the direct gibe on his less-than-perfect relationship with his daughter. "We're leaving!" he said loudly. Moving out from the tiny booth, he pointed menacingly at Bakura. "Get out of the way."

Kyouko frowned, making no move, like the man next to her, to leave her seat. "Daddy, why don't you let mister help you?" She patted Bakura's shoulder. "He says he can make you better!"

Ryou's eyes flashed dangerously at Bakura, as if accusing him of feeding her such falsehood. "Nothing's wrong—"

"Quit your lies, Ryou," Bakura finally snapped. "You and I both know that your little secret is about to burst."

"What secret, Daddy?" Kyouko's voice was urgent. "What is it?"

Ryou looked faintly at his daughter, then at the table. "I—"

"Is there really something wrong with you, Daddy?" Ryou and Bakura looked down simultaneously at Kyouko. She turned from one man to the other with worried eyes. "Are you sick?"

Ryou tore his face away from his daughter's anxiously. "I-I'm not, Kyouko-chan," he whispered feebly as he seemed to shrink away from her. His arms crossed around and over each other protectively.

"Daddies shouldn't lie," Kyouko said loudly. "If you're sick, I want you to get help, Daddy. And if this mister really is the only one that can help you, I want you to listen to him." She scooted closer to where her father was, but made no move to touch him. "I want you to get better."

Bakura waited impatiently for the man to finally confess. But then, as Ryou's face turned from a shade of off-peach to paper-white, and he looked about ready to keel over in the booth right then and there, the man once again had that slight wave of sympathy.

"It's that thing that we were talking about up on the balcony, kid," Bakura said hastily. "It's one of those_…" _he struggled to string his thoughts in a comprehensible manner. "…_secret_, friend secrets," he finished lamely.

Kyouko turned to him. "…Ohh…" she sounded out understandingly. "So Daddy can't tell me?"

Ryou looked anxiously over to her, noticeably aware of her melancholy tone, and shot another warning glare over to Bakura. Bakura shrugged in a faux air of innocence.

"Kyouko-chan. Go to the restroom," Ryou ordered quite suddenly.

Kyouko looked up with confusion marking her features. "But I don't need to go right now, Daddy."

Ryou frowned darkly, and only the opposing white-haired male knew that there was a hidden agenda behind his words. "Kyouko-chan, Daddy still has to buy some groceries afterwards. It'll be a while before we go home."

"But I _really_ don't have to go right now…" Kyouko protested again.

"If you don't go now, Youtai-san will leave." He shot a dirty look over at Bakura, as if a look alone could hint to what would come if the other was to disagree.

Bakura simply shrugged again, and stood up to let her pass. Kyouko was gone in a flash. Sitting back down to directly face Ryou, Bakura eased back into his seat.

"So?"

Ryou's voice immediately seemed to multiply tenfold in acidity. "Listen carefully, Youtai Bakura, I don't know what kind of act you're pulling this time, but I'll tell you right here that I'm not interested. There is nothi—"

Bakura abruptly leaned towards the man, effectively cutting off his speech. "Don't tell me you're about to say there's nothing wrong with you, Ryou." The other man flinched at the close contact, setting off a dastardly grin on Bakura's face. "...See?" he taunted lowly.

"You—" Ryou hissed. Bakura's sudden grip on his arm stopped him. "Let _go_ of me—" His voice began to rise in an angry, panicked snarl.

"See? This is your problem," Bakura snapped. "You can't raise your kid right if you won't even go near her, you bastard. Don't you want your kid to be happy, Ryou? I know you haven't told her anything, and you know what? She's starting to think you don't_ like _her."

"How dare you say that!" Ryou gasped out in a sharp hiss. "Let go—"

Bakura's grip tightened. "Aren't I right, though? Think about it… you get used to an asshole like me…" he began, lips curling up into a sardonic smile. "…And you'll never have to see your kid cry again."

He paused, thinking about his last few words.

"Well, not directly, but you get the point," Bakura admitted in a qualifying manner. Then he continued. "Trust me… you _need_ me."

Releasing his hold on the other man, Bakura leaned back to await the man's reply. Ryou jerked his arm away, clutching his upper arm with his other hand. "I have absolutely no reason to trust you," Ryou spat out. "Why should I believe _anything _that comes out of your filthy mouth?"

"I'm the only one who can help you," he repeated simply, once again ignoring the barbed insult.

The thin man scoffed cynically. "Don't put yourself on such a high pedestal, Youtai Bakura," he spat out. "How did you even come to _that_ absurd conclusion?"

Grin and bear it. Just grin and bear it.

Bakura let out a snort. "I know you won't go get professional help. You don't want anyone to know, right?" He sneered. "Hell, you even wanted to make a deal and never bring it up again."

"Then _why_ are you doing this?" Ryou suddenly hissed.

"…What?"

"Why did you have to break your end?" Ryou's voice began to get louder, and angrier as well. "Can't you leave well enough alone?"

"Now look here—"

"Even though I kept with my promise not to mention what had happened again, you're _still_ after me!" There was a mix of hysteria and desperation in his tone.

"Shit! Don't you _get it_, Ryou? This is bigger than the damn deal—"

"So you're saying this goes back to when we first met," Ryou concluded, breathing short. "When you said that you're going to make life hell for me…" His eyes narrowed into slits. "You think this is a fucking _game_!" he shouted.

"_What_? You're getting more and more ridiculous by the second! No, I just—"

"You think you've finally won this, Youtai Bakura," Ryou continued in a forced, now calmed tone. "That because you are in favor with my daughter with your _lies_, you think that just because I've given in to your petty demands, that this is over." Then he gave a sharp, humorless scoff. "Is that right?"

'_Lies_'? That did it.

"I'm not lying, you fucking paranoid bastard," he hissed. "Take a damn good _look_ at yourself, would you?"

Damn it, he was actually going out of his way to make the man's life better for him and his child— well, to some extent, that was his purpose— and here Ryou was, still thinking it was part of a stupid thing he said over a month ago.

Leave it to a man like Ryou to remember something as unimportant as that.

…He tried to momentarily suppress all his memories in which "that" was the highlight of his days when he first met the guy.

"I find that hard to believe," Ryou dead-panned sarcastically. His eyes narrowed. "I'll remind you, Youtai Bakura, that I don't trust you. Just because _you_ think that you can help me, that hardly works the other way around. I don't need your help with _anything_, including raising my child."

"Too bad little Kyouko doesn't think the same way as her daddy, now, isn't it, then?" Bakura drawled smugly. "She likes me. And like _I_ said before, you're gonna break your kid's heart if you don't get help… from _me_." Ryou opened his mouth in a snarl, but Bakura cut him off. "I'm not doing this because of _pity_, Ryou," Bakura continued flatly. "You and I both know it's more than just "company" that you need. I just think that that'll be the best way to fix…" he trailed off with a sneer. "… your _problem_, that's all."

"And what are _you_ expecting to get out of this?" Ryou hissed. "You're wasting your time. I'll never let someone like _you_ near her."

Bakura was getting awfully fed up with how Ryou spoke to him.

"What the fuck does _that_ mean?" Bakura began to shout, briefly forgetting his surroundings, and only aware of the acerbic words spat out of the other's mouth. "What 'someone like' me?" He grabbed Ryou's arm from across the table. "You know what? I'm damn sick of your fucking attitude! I did _nothing_ to you—"

Ryou knocked over Bakura's uneaten bowl of ice cream as he let out a pained screech and tore his arm away from grasp. The innocent plastic container toppled over, and some of the sweet contents ended up on Ryou's sleeve.

Ryou paid no mind to his dirtied coat, but rather faced Bakura with a look that spoke of nothing else other than bitter hatred. "You did 'nothing', you say?" he mocked. "You can't fucking leave me alone! You can't help but toy around with your sick little games! You're _exactly_ like h—"

Ryou stopped his sentence mid-way as Bakura stared agape at him. The former took a short, shaky breath, and then continued again in a forced calmness.

"I'll tell you _this_, Youtai Bakura. I will never let a smoker anywhere near my child. Even if Kyouko-chan '_likes_'_ you_, as you say." He scoffed as he quoted Bakura. "I'd rather my daughter hate me than ever have to suffer through someone _else_ who _willingly _inhales fatal poison and harm others for the sake of h—his…_pleasure_..." He gritted out the last word with an almost disquieting shudder.

Bakura was not quite sure how to react at this point, other than file Ryou's outburst into his memory for future study.

"I can quit whenever I damn please." Bakura snapped irritably. "And I can even fucking start right now." He jabbed a finger onto the table between them to further prove his point.

It was quite safe to say that the man had no idea what he was saying.

The other man stared at him for a moment, but then began to laugh, as if that was the most absurd thing he has ever heard. "_Quitting_?" He let out a dry, harsh chuckle and leered again. "Exactly how long have you been smoking, Youtai Bakura?"

"Only four years," Bakura snapped.

"What? '_Only_ four years'? Oh, I see," Ryou mocked in an extremely unbefitting way. "You think that you can quit a habit after four years while some people can remain addicted after just a few times?"

"Yeah—"

"_You're a damn liar_."

"Fuck you, Ryou!" Bakura yelled, his patience tipping over dangerously. "I don't know what the _fuck_ is with you thinking that I'm making this up! I don't even _know_ who the hell you're comparing me to!"

He involuntarily moved back as Ryou's face contorted itself into an expression of utter contempt. Something in his mind warned him of unforeseen dangers as a side of Ryou's lips tilted up in a eerie smile.

"You think I'm judging you? Alright, then _suppose_ you can keep your word this time," Ryou finally whispered silkily. "You want to be entertained, right? Fine…You may come over whenever you wish, then, Youtai Bakura. In fact, how about if I accept _whatever_ your means of help is? Company, what-have-you. Anything."

"'_This time'_? You fu—" Bakura stopped when the weight of Ryou's latter words sank in. "What?"

Ryou gave him that odd, disbelieving grin again. "There is one condition. I'll give you four days to quit smoking completely. One day for every year you've been smoking. That's _fair_, isn't it? In that time, you will leave me alone, and you will figure out if you can really do it.

"After exactly four days, and I find that you plan to come to see…us, that'll mean you've successfully been able to stop by those four days, and that you have agreed to quit permanently. I'll then even _graciously_ accept you." His tone implied that he meant anything but. "For as long as you never intend to smoke a single cigarette, I will allow my daughter to welcome you as a guest." Then the grin slipped away, and in its place, a feral sneer replaced it. "But the instant you break the deal will be the instant you'll regret _ever_ deciding to mind my affairs… Don't think that I won't do anything about it this time," he whispered in a near-velvet voice.

…Was that a threat?

"Daddy, I'm done!"

Ryou turned to look at Kyouko, who stood a short distance away, hands dripping with water.

As she climbed back up into the booth, this time sitting next to her father, Ryou looked uncomfortably at her sopping wet hands. Rolling his eyes, Bakura automatically pulled a few napkins out and quickly dried them for her.

"Oh, thank you, mister!" Kyouko chirped, grinning up at him. Then her smile lessened as she ogled back from her father to Bakura. "Uhh…"

"Youtai-san can come over, Kyouko-chan," Ryou said to his daughter in the same smooth tone. "Now isn't that nice of him?"

Kyouko gasped in delight. "Daddy, you said 'yes'? You're going to let this mister help you?"

"…Yes." A smile that went unnoticed by Kyouko, but not by Bakura, crept onto Ryou's face as she shook Bakura's hand violently in congratulations. "But only if Youtai-san gives up smoking."

"Believe me, Ryou," Bakura spat, allowing his arm to go numb from the girl's wild swinging, "I'll be able to get through with it." He turned to Kyouko with a crazed smirk. "Happy to see your old man's _pals_ more often?" he asked, making sure to put emphasis on 'pal'.

Kyouko beamed back. "Uh-huh! Daddy needs his own friends to come over to play, too! We can all play together now!" Her eyes lit up in excitement. "Mister, mister! Can you come over tonight?"

"No, he can't," Ryou answered delicately for him. "You have school tomorrow, Kyouko-chan."

"…Oh, right." Kyouko sulked back down into her seat. Then she sat up again. "Tomorrow, then?"

"Uh… can't make it tomorrow. Thursday. I'll be over Thursday."

"Really? Yay!" Kyouko cheered, throwing her arms up in victory as she bounced herself up and down on the plastic cushion. "I'm so happy!"

"Mark my words, Ryou," Bakura said loudly. "I'll _definetely_ be there Thursday."

Ryou simply gave him another odd smile.

* * *

On the ride home, Bakura slowly reviewed today's events in his mind. He suddenly grinned.

It had worked— his plan had worked. Now Ryou had no other choice but to accept him into his home. The fool-proof plan of helping Ryou establish a better relationship with Kyouko was well underway.

But then the smile slowly melted away.

Shit. He needed to quit smoking. He said that he would.

And this time, he felt that Ryou definitely had something solid hidden behind his warning of what was to come if he went back on his word again. He had that creepy little grin to prove it.

Bakura shivered at the memory.

This wasn't like last time, where Ryou simply said that he'd never bring up the incident of a drunken, idiotic Bakura assaulting him, if they kept to terms. There would be consequences to pay this time around; Bakura was sure as hell going to avoid suffering them if he could help it, keyword, surprisingly enough, being "suffering".

Bakura then thought about what Ryou said about him being just like some other person. He frowned. The man had started talking about something strange— something about how Bakura was similar to some person who apparently did the same things he did.

…That was slightly unnerving.

Hell, that blurt-out was actually more pretty damn close to creeping Bakura out, which was a reaction that the man was proud to say he did not display often.

So there was someone else who continually bothered Ryou?

"Well, I wouldn't call it 'bothering' the guy," Bakura reasoned dismissively. "It's just… interest, that's all. Yeah… Interest."

There was also the part about this person's "sick little games."

Now, that didn't apply to Bakura at all. Ryou must have been mistaking him for someone else.

Deciding to push those thoughts to the side for now, Bakura settled uncomfortably against the seat as the train rumbled on through the skies of Domino City.

When he went home, in the silent recesses of his "new" apartment, the man stared into his garbage can for a good minute until he slowly raised his foot off the lever and allowed the lid to fall deafeningly over his cigarettes.

"I'll make sure to get through my end, Bakura Ryou," he said loudly to his trash can. "I don't even have to gradually cut down on my cigarettes to quit completely, either. I'm doing it cold, you hear that? I won't need any of those damn patches or gum. I'm doing it cold! _Cold_!" he shouted. "Just you wait."

* * *

The first night went by relatively smoothly. Although Bakura had been partially lying when he claimed that he wasn't addicted, the main reason for his smoking was for relaxation purposes. For example, his "smoking breaks" in the elevator.

Ah, nostalgia.

In all seriousness, however, Bakura did depend quite heavily on his cigarettes to calm himself down, mainly when Yuugi got on his case, and later, when Bakura Ryou did, as well. The unfortunate side of the matter was that without them, he tended to get a little…extreme in his already fluctuating mood swings, especially when displaying negative emotions. It had gotten quite embarrassing once or twice.

But that was a long time ago, way before he met Ryou, and pointless to bring up now.

Bakura began to pace back and forth in the small space of his balcony, breathing in the cooling night air as he walked. He snuck a glance over to next door, and was unsurprised to find that the curtains were drawn tightly behind the glass doors.

He made a childish face over in the general direction, and began to pace in the opposite direction again.

Besides quitting, it looked as if Bakura would need to wash his entire wardrobe to get rid of the rancid smell of cigarette smoke. He raised a sleeve of his jacket to test if he could smell it, and took a deep inhale. He immediately pulled it away to cough at the smothering scent.

Damn cough. Damn clothes. Damn cold air.

Wait. He was missing something…

Oh, right —Damn Bakura Ryou.

Much better.

* * *

The first day of being completely smoke-free didn't fare so well, largely due to the thoughtful present of Mutou Yuugi's Newest Update on Everything that greeted him cheerily on his day back off his "weekend vacation".

Yuugi was super excited to tell him about all the great reviews 'The King of Games' had been getting. The video game had hit the shelves early over the past weekend after a decision to speed up its release date— Bakura supposed that Kaiba could pull it off; he was _Kaiba_, after all— and its feedback was apparently some of the best Kaiba Corp had ever seen.

All Bakura had to say was a flat-toned "oh". In fact, the man had completely forgotten about the release of the new game, having spent all his energy and waking hours either thinking about Ryou, following Ryou, or talking to Ryou.

Hmm.

Yuugi also made sure to tell him that 'Yami Yuugi' was a special favorite among fans, especially the female ones. Oh, if only any of them knew that the real Mutou Yuugi was actually a single, twenty-something year old who did nothing else but draw on a computer program all day.

…In that description, he alluded specifically to Yuugi, only.

The second day was progressively worse than the first one. By this time, the man had been without his cigarettes for approximately forty-two complete hours. It was difficult to not think about his smokes when he could think nothing else but to have one as Yuugi sang and pranced his way around him during work hours.

He resorted to gnashing his teeth together whenever it got too far, and tried not to overreact too much as the cherubic-faced man hummed an annoying pop song tune, because that would be a sure way to destroy his resolve, and perhaps his sanity.

When he went home that evening, however, with a developing eye twitch and a sore jaw, he saw Ryou and Kyouko as the pair was about to enter their own apartment. It only took that sneer and the mocking sign of raising two fingers from Ryou to denote either the number of days to go or the number of days past, to fuel Youtai Bakura right back up.

The third day was an unfortunate step back to zero in terms of Bakura's tenacity; Wednesday had started with an unexpected meeting.

Kaiba, who had been holed up in his office ever since he returned from his trip, surprised everyone when he suddenly rounded up all his character designers that morning.

"Nothing beats getting into a room with the boss on one side of me and Mutou on the other," Bakura mumbled darkly to himself as he situated himself in one of the seats lined up in a border around the massive, shiny, mahogany table of one of the several meeting rooms in the building.

No one was quite sure exactly what the meeting was supposed to be about, and Bakura just hoped that Kaiba wasn't planning on announcing the start of a new game just yet. Although it has already been about a month since 'The King of Games' had been released, Bakura was nearly certain that if a new project landed on his lap right now, the choice was to either resume smoking or hurl himself out a window high off the ground.

As the group waited for Kaiba to make his grand entrance, Yuugi spun himself around in one of the leather chairs. "Whee!"

"Quit it, you fucking baby!" Bakura immediately snapped to the man. He pushed the chair to a stop, the force almost flinging Yuugi out of the seat.

"It's just so cool, Youtai-kun! I never knew leather could be so comfortable!" Yuugi squealed in amazement.

"…Let's not go in that direction," Bakura muttered. "Damn it! Is he here yet?" he snarled to no one.

"Wow, you're jumpy today, Youtai-ku—"

The doors opened with a bang, effectively quieting down all conversations. Kaiba Seto sauntered in with a few assistants trailing behind in his wake.

The group quickly made their greetings to their boss with a bow and a polite "good morning" in chorus before sitting back down again in complete quietude.

"Silence!" he barked.

As if anyone had even been talking.

Kaiba sat down importantly at the head of the table, and folded his arms menacingly, glaring at his employees.

'Oh, shit, the man looks pissed'. Bakura screwed his eyelids tightly closed and once again had the longing to smoke— "No! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!" Bakura mentally smacked himself. His flew his eyes open. Phew, good thing he didn't say anything out loud, or else he _definitely_ could have gotten fired—

"…Kaiba-kun! How was your time in Bermuda?"

'_Why_? Why does Mutou _always have to do this to me_?' Emitting a silent groan, Bakura, along with all the other people in the room, waited for Kaiba to throw the well-intentioned man out, but was shocked to see the man make an almost half-pleased facial expression.

"…It went well enough."

"Oh, that's good, then," Yuugi babbled on, "because Youtai-kun and I were talking about what was over there when you left all that time ago." He patted Bakura's shoulder, as if purposely laser-beaming who had been gossiping about their boss with him would prove his point. "Apparently, there's a famous triangle over there."

Oh, for the love of the gods, they were in for it.

"Hnn. So you're Youtai Bakura," Kaiba said expressionlessly. "He's told me about you…"

"…Eh?"

The brunet suddenly coughed into his fist, and sat up straighter. "Mutou has told me about you," his boss said determinedly. "You're the one who thought of basing the main character design on yourself, didn't you?"

"Uh, yeah. That's… right." Lies upon lies.

"Humph." Kaiba leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table and weaving his fingers together at the tips. "Very well. This meeting has now begun," the man announced importantly to the entire group.

"As expected, the newest video game release occurred just this past Saturday," Kaiba continued. "I am unashamed to say that 'The King of Games' has been an international success, gaining only positive reception. There has been expressed interest in the Magic and Wizards card game aspect in the plot by many of its players. I believe that acting on their desires will be a good buisness opportunity for Kaiba Corp to keep its place as the number one video game company, because I will _definetely not _stand for this company to be second place to Industrial Illusions. For that reason, in a few months, I expect the release of the continuation of 'The King of Games', but this time concentrating exclusively on that aspect only."

The entire room of video game designers stared blankly back at him.

"I will make it _clearer_," Kaiba said impatiently. "There will be a _new_ focus on this game, which will from here-on-out be titled as 'The King of Games: Duelist'."

There still remained no reaction.

"Do you fucking morons _understand the words coming out of my mouth_? New game! 'Magic and Wizards' only!"

Then there was a sudden uproar of surprised murmurs. "_What_?"

" On 'Magic and Wizards' _only_?"

"How would that work out?"

"What does _that_ mean?"

"I want _silence_!" Kaiba shouted. The side conversations once again immediately cut themselves off. "In other words, since you ignoramuses are apparently _still_ too dim-witted to figure it out yourselves, it _means_ I'm _turning this shit into trading cards_!" He stood up. "And what that means for _you people _is that for the next few weeks, you will do nothing else but design characters for a _children's card game_, understand?" He paused exaggeratedly. "… Or you're all _fired_! Meeting over."

The man left with his billowing coat and assistants in tow.

Meanwhile, in the meeting room, as hubbub once again took over among majority of the employees, Yuugi squealed with happiness and clasped his hands together in glee. "Think of all the cute, new characters we can make!"

Bakura groaned, and hit his forehead against the table top.

As all the video game designers finally returned to their floor, Yuugi gushed about what he and Bakura ought to work on first as the former looked over the list of cards that the pair of them were now responsible for.

"All these cards are supposed to have pretty girls on them, Youtai-kun!" he sighed happily. "Isn't that just so super special awesome?"

"How? How the fuck did I get into this mess?" Bakura moaned to himself, clawing at his cheek with his free hand. "Why the hell are there so many female character cards, anyway?" he snapped, flipping through his own copy of the list.

"Duh! It's because majority of the actual characters are _only_ hot bishounen, Youtai-kun," Yuugi bragged, flipping back a jagged, blond bang with a flick of a hand.

Bakura snorted. "Yeah, like you, right?" he mocked as they walked back into their cubicles.

"Exactly!"

Bakura rolled his eyes, and sat down in his chair. He let out a long exhale, and rubbed his thumbs against his temples.

The windows in the meeting room looking out into the rest of Domino City had looked pretty tempting.

* * *

Nearing the end of the fourth day, Bakura was close to seriously contemplating to say his goodbyes from Meeting Room B's windows of his workplace.

For on that day, by eight o'clock in the morning, the man had successfully gotten through nearly ninety hours without breaking his word. His jaw was now extremely sore from clenching his teeth together whenever something threatened to destabilize his temper, and if his right eye kept on twitching like this, he would start needing to see an optometrist.

His withdrawal symptoms had even now extended to extreme anxiety and absentmindedness.

But the man told himself this— "You keep it up for just about six or seven more hours, and you get to rub it in that bastard's face, Youtai Bakura. Remember that."

His self-pep-talk helped, but only a little.

For such reasons, there was something noticeably odd about the white-haired video game designer that more than one person finally noticed that Thursday. Jounouchi, for starters.

"Hey, Youtai!" The blond waved sleepily at the man just as the latter tried to lock his apartment behind him that morning.

Bakura jumped at the greeting, and simply gave a grunt as he turned his attention back onto the task at hand.

Jounouchi stared as Bakura fumbled with pushing the key into the door without success, and blinked as the man repeatedly tried stabbing the innocent piece of metal into the keyhole.

"Youtai. Are you trying to lock your door with your mailbox key?"

Bakura looked up at him again irritably. "Of course I'm not, you fool—" He looked down again, made a squawking sound, and quickly amended his mistake. "You didn't see that," he snapped in warning to the blond.

Jounouchi shrugged good-naturedly, dropped off his garbage bags, and graciously went back inside.

As Bakura rode down the elevator, he concentrated on the brilliantly red and white 'no-smoking' sign with such intensity that he saw the same sign in its inverted colors green and black against the white sidewalk on the walk to the train station.

Colleagues could testify to the uncharacteristically anxiety-ridden colleague as Bakura suffered through a day in Kaiba Corp.

First, he worked tirelessly on one card design named Kuriboh. Yuugi had decided to hog nearly all of the "cute girl monsters" cards for himself to design, which was fine by him. Unable to pay close attention, when he was finally done, he could only stare at a mouth-less brown fur-ball with headlights for eyes and four, green clawed appendages sticking out of its body.

Not really caring if it'll get rejected or not, he tossed it in the pile for Kaiba to approve.

One well-intentioned colleague later timidly pointed out to Bakura that the mug the second was drinking from in the coffee room belonged to her. She was quickly frightened away by the man with a glare. It was only upon closer inspection while drinking copious amounts of the stuff that finally Bakura noticed that the mug was indeed labeled "Florence", when he spat it all back out and got the hell out of there.

He confused Yuugi's place as his own, and spent ten minutes wondering what virus had gotten to his computer as he stared at the basket filled with kittens and puppies as his wallpaper.

Bakura spent a longer time eating his lunch than was usual, partly due to his jaw, and also because of the surprising insight that if he ate, the craving to smoke decreased some. He chewed on his plastic drinking straw as he worked for the rest of the day.

"Back off, Mutou," Bakura warned as he saw the man advancing quietly toward his general direction near the beginning of the evening.

Swiping the last of his papers into his bag with a shaking hand, he pushed back his chair and slung the worn bag over his shoulder. "Whatever you want to harp about can wait. I'm in a hurry to leave, here."

Yuugi pouted. "Geez, Youtai-kun. You're so mean to me."

"Well, I'm mean to a lot of others, too," Bakura snapped. "So don't start getting jealous."

Yuugi sighed, and sat down backwards in his computer chair. Looking around him for a moment, he let out another sigh and rested his chin against his arms. "It sucks that Kaiba-kun came back so soon. I'd like to go out for a lunch break again now and then, you know?" He grinned. "Wasn't that time at Burger World fun?"

"Hn? Yeah, sure." Bakura grabbed his coat and anxiously checked to make sure his cell phone and keys were in place.

"You're been out of it the entire day," Yuugi complained. "Something on your mind?" His face brightened. "You know you can always tell _me_ about it!"

"I'm meeting with someone, Mutou," Bakura snapped, patting his belongings down again. "That good enough for you?"

Yuugi's mouth dropped open. "What? You're going on a date?" He took a sniff. "Wow! No wonder you don't smell like cigarettes today! I thought, 'Hey, Youtai-kun wouldn't wash his Hobo-Outfit without a reason!' And look!" he realized excitedly."You're wearing a new jacket!"

Bakura grunted. The reason for that was that he was unable to wash the cigarette smoke out as easily on his windbreaker. But Yuugi didn't need to know that.

"Oh ho _ho_! So it turns out you're trying to make good impressions! Who's the girl?" Yuugi asked eagerly.

"Wha—No! I'm meeting with a gu—! What the— _Shit_! I don't have to explain myself to you!" Bakura groaned out loud exasperatedly, and scratched angrily at his hair. "_Nothing_!" he finally yelled, as if that one word explained it all.

"Then why are you so nervous, Youtai-kun?" Yuugi pointed out, calmly looking past the outburst.

"I'm _not_!" Bakura protested in an almost whining tone. "Shit! Leave me alone, Mutou."

Yuugi pouted again. "It's okay if you don't want to talk to me right now, Youtai-kun. As long as you don't go smoking to calm your nerves." He gave the man a pointed look. "You know how bad smoking is—"

"Shut up!" Bakura suddenly screamed. "Just _shut the fuck up_, Mutou!" Yuugi immediately did so, along with everyone else in the vicinity. Bakura turned to his other coworkers. "What are you all looking at? Get back to work!" Leaning down to face Yuugi, he jabbed an accusing finger into the man's forehead. "Look, god damn it! I'm trying to quit! It's hard enough trying to come to work and face your insanity without my cigarettes, alright? _Don't. Keep. Reminding me_!"

"You're quitting, Youtai-kun?" Yuugi gasped in surprise. "I'm so happy for you! I have to tell everyone the good news!" He got ready to stand up on his chair, but Bakura quickly pulled him back down.

"No, you're not, Mutou. I don't need the temptation to smoke because you're making my damn blood pressure rise... Which _will_ happen if you start singing out my business for the entire damn world to hear!"

"Got it!" Yuugi bobbed his head along obediently. "How long have you gone without the cancer sticks?"

"The _what_— Mutou, you're a jackass, you know that?" the man spat, unamused. Then he answered proudly: "Since Sunday afternoon. Three forty-five PM."

"Wow! So it's already been four days? I'm so proud! …By the way, it was my helpful, health-friendly messages that brought this on, right?"

"_Surprisingly_...No."

"_What_?" Yuugi whined. "Who beat me to it?"

"Do the words 'none of your business' mean nothing to you, Mutou?" Bakura yelled.

"Aww! Not this _again_! Why do you always have to keep me in the dark about everything, Youtai-kun?" Yuugi gave him an evil look. "Watch out. One of these days, I'll find out _everything_."

Bakura did not seem to hear his threat, and instead, once again made sure he had everything for the third time, and left.

* * *

The man had calmed down a considerable amount by the time he walked back to Ginmaru Apartments. It was largely in thanks to a pack of cookies he had bought from the nearby convenience store, of which was now opened, and of which three or four of the chocolate baked sweets were now crammed into his mouth under the same logic that if he had something to eat, then he wouldn't get the craving to smoke.

If he had to put something in his mouth, he might as well have something he liked.

As he stood in front of the Bakura residence, Youtai Bakura felt rejuvenated in his mission to finally get to the bottom of his business with Ryou.

He rang the doorbell once. There was a little girl's scream of delight from inside, and quick, tiny footsteps coming to the door. Then they stopped, and Bakura could hear a low male voice saying something indistinguishable.

Then the door opened slowly; Bakura Ryou and Youtai Bakura momentarily locked eyes with each other.

It would have been quite apt for the whole setting to turn to one of the old American wild West small towns, where there would be a small crowd of spectators watching two cowboys ready to duke it out with ten steps, a turn, and a fatal gunshot.

…Come to think of it, the image would really be complete if there was a tumbleweed rolling nearby.

Unfortunately, none of these props were even remotely accessible, and the only thing that could somewhat resemble the dry thistle plant was the wrapper from one of the cookies he was eating that blew itself along his feet.

However, the two male leads were there, and Bakura supposed that in the end, that was all that was necessary.

Bakura and Ryou continued to stare at each other for a moment, and Bakura almost got the sensation that the man was trying to test X-ray vision, until Bakura seemed to pass whatever invisible, physical test the other had created.

"Youtai Bakura," Ryou finally acknowledged. "You're here."

"Bakura Ryou." Bakura replied, spraying a few crumbs out as he spoke.

Shit. There goes all the points in the 'coolness' category.

Ryou gave him another odd smile. The soon-to-be guest swallowed before continuing with a slight embarrassed twinge of purple on his face. "Yeah. I'm _here_."

"So I don't have to remind you?" Ryou questioned lightly. "What you're agreeing to once you enter?"

"Oh, don't worry," Bakura replied sarcastically. "I'm planning to light up as soon as I get in there... I'm joking, damn it!" he amended hastily as he saw Ryou's darkening expression.

"Mister! You're here, you're here!" Bakura gave a deliberately large smile to Kyouko as she popped out to the side from behind her father. "Hi!" she chirped.

"Hey, kid." He turned back to the other man."…So, you're gonna let me inside, Ryou?"

Ryou gave him another look, and finally allowed the man in with a step back.

* * *

**Author's Note: **As a few Good Readers have told me, it is structure over smut! Therefore, there may be a bit more time to wait before I can actually officially call this story a romance...

And hey, Bakura learns a bit more about Ryou in this chapter! (Mysterious announcer voice:) Who is this mysterious person that Ryou compares Bakura to? Will this development hinder our hero in his vague goals of trying to get closer to Ryou for reasons our favorite video game designer _still_ can't figure out? Find out next time on _Of Elevators and Muses_! (cue end credit theme)

The mention of "Florence" is a reference to Bakura's despised name in YGOTAS that his parents were supposed to give him. **Nameless Pharaoh **suggested Kaiba's "Pegasus's inspired line 'I'm turning this sh*t into trading cards!'"

That reminds me! Kaiba's sudden decision to change the original video game plot is based off of Kazuki Takahashi's decision to focus solely on the card game after fans asked about it, which apparently occurred according to the ever-reliable Wikipedia. Industrial Illusions alludes to Pegusas J. Crawford's company.

I had to have the video game released early for plot related reasons; if you read closely last chapter, O Reader, you would have noticed that it was originally scheduled to be released in two months, and not in one.


	8. Mistake

"_Thank you_," Bakura drawled as he stepped over the threshold. Ryou made a discontent sound with his tongue against his teeth, glowering at him as he passed.

"I'll show you our home, mister! A tour! A tour!" Kyouko offered excitedly to Bakura as the man kicked off his shoes. She hopped around eagerly, her little bare feet pattering loudly against the wooden floor.

"'A tour'?" Bakura repeated with interest. He nudged his shoes to the side as Ryou just stared at his actions with disgust. "Hey, sure—"

"You will do no such thing, Kyouko-chan," Ryou interrupted sharply, as he hunched down to arrange the shoes properly. "Youtai-san is staying in this area _only_," he said in a tone that dared defiance, motioning his head to the small living-dining area.

"…Aww," Kyouko whined. "Okay, Daddy," she answered back gloomily.

Bakura snorted; the only reason why Ryou was acting more of an asshole than he generally was simply came from the idea that Bakura had managed to pass the first hurdle without trouble. What a sore loser.

It didn't matter, though. Bakura had already seen the inside of Ryou and Kyouko's bedroom from his balcony, anyhow.

… That fact was less disturbing to him when he didn't think it out loud.

"Here, here! Daddy bought these slippers for you!" She thrust a pair of light yellow house slippers with puppy faces into his arms. She glanced at her father's expression. "Well, _I _picked them out, and _Daddy_ bought them— I'll show you the living room, mister!" Kyouko burst out with a new wave of enthusiasm.

Walking deeper into the apartment in his ridiculous slippers with Kyouko eagerly pulling him along and Ryou off to the side, Bakura noticed with relative interest that although the man had been living there for quite a bit of time, somehow, Ryou's apartment looked as equally unlived in as his own.

There was not a single scratch or a speck of dust to be seen anywhere on the round, child-proof glass coffee table, or the slightest hint of a spill on the small cluster of sofas around it. Thinking back to his own marred table, rusty-spring couch, and even the forming pile of neglected laundry accumulating in his new place, the man had to admit that there was something seriously wrong here.

"That's the kitchen," Kyouko babbled proudly. "You see it?" She pointed to the small kitchenette looking out into the rest of the main room. "There's a fridge and the sink and… and… a bunch of other stuff, too."

"…I see it."

"That's me and Daddy's bedroom," she continued. "But we can't go in there."

"Right."

"And that's Daddy's piano!" Kyouko pointed to a large, sitting object next to one of the larger couches tucked to the side of the living room. Bakura allowed himself to be led to it.

It wasn't anything particularly interesting. It was a simple black, upright piano with an impeccably glossy surface and a pile of sheets of music pinned neatly on the stand. Nevertheless, Bakura was instantly reminded that it was this piano that had started the whole Besting-That-Damn-Bakura-Ryou escapade.

Reaching out to open the cover over the keyboard, he yelped when Kyouko pushed his hand away. "What—?" he protested. Off into the distance, Bakura could hear Ryou letting out a short, amused snort.

"Only Daddy can touch the piano," Kyouko explained to him with an air of authority. "It's one of the rules." She then patted his hand reassuringly. "But maybe, when you're a little older, you'll get to touch it, too." She beamed brightly. "That's what Daddy told me, that when I'm older, he'll teach me to play." She turned over to her father, who was standing in the kitchenette, keeping a close watch on the pair as he tied on a plain white apron. "Right, Daddy?"

"…Y-Yes," came the stammered answer, with the slightest bit of embarrassment. But then Ryou took a glance at Bakura's forming, impish grin, and his look once again reverted back to its usual stoic, bitter self.

"Aww, isn't that sweet, " Bakura jeered.

Ryou slowly held up a meat cleaver menacingly.

Bakura closed his mouth.

"Mister! I'll show you all my kitties and doggies that Daddy got me!" Kyouko suddenly exclaimed. "I'll go get them!" She bounded into her room.

Bakura's grin widened, and he sat down comfortably on the nearest couch. He was aware that Ryou was still watching him, and he looked up to meet his eyes. "What?"

"…What are you planning to do today, Youtai Bakura?" Ryou demanded.

In any other situation, the question might have appeared to be completely innocent. In fact, to a bystander who was unaware of all the gory details clinging to the case, it might have even been as simple as a young man asking his spouse what their activities were for the evening, which was an especially strong image that came to mind due to the almost odd domestic nature of Ryou's apron.

"Today?" Bakura thought about it; he actually did not have much definite steps in his plan— the most crucial part was simply to get himself in here. And now that he was, the rest of the plan vaguely suggested a kind of means to stick around until Ryou became accustomed to his presence. "Observing," he finally answered. He shrugged. "Just looking at what I have to work with for now. I'm still thinking about what to do later." Ryou bristled, probably at his choice of words. "Hey! Don't look at me like that, Bakura Ryou. You're the one who said you'll agree to let me do _anything_ to help."

The sound of a little girl's footsteps pattering down the hall silenced any reply Ryou was about to make. "Mister! Mister! I brought them out!" Kyouko released an armful of large stuffed animals into the couch next to him. Rearranging them into an order only she understood, she quickly tried to have her toys make acquaintances with their new guest.

Bakura nodded along with her excited banter, and only felt slightly silly as he bowed his head lightly to her animal friends, who's owner repeated the polite gesture by squishing down the cotton-filled heads of the stuffed toys.

After saying his last greetings to a pink and blue spotted cow, Bakura took out his bag of cookies from his jacket that he had momentarily forgotten about. "Oh, kid, want some cookies?"

"Really? Thanks a lot, mister!" Kyouko happily took the chocolate cookie, but Ryou quickly scolded the action.

"Kyouko-chan! What did I say about eating right before taking a bath? It's bad for you!"

"Oh, come on, Ryou. A damn cookie isn't going to do any harm, right, kid?" He turned to Kyouko, who was now pouting hesitatingly. "Let her take the bath later if it really bothers you that much." Kyouko turned to her father with a hopeful look in her eyes.

Ryou scowled, and turned away. "I don't want you eating any more after that one, Kyouko-chan; we're having dinner soon," he called warningly from the kitchenette.

"Yay! Oh, Mister! Are you staying for dinner?"

"Yes," Bakura answered immediately. He shot a glare over to Ryou, who had said 'no' just as quickly.

"No," Ryou repeated louder. "Youtai-san will do that another day." He once again spoke in a voice that insinuated that defiance will result in a grisly end.

Bakura sucked on his teeth in discontentment, but said nothing in return. Turning to Kyouko's crestfallen face, he said in an attempt to pacify her, "Too bad, but I've got a lot of work to do recently, kid." He sighed exaggeratedly. "Important stuff."

Sure enough, her attention was quickly captured by the vague nature of his words. "What do you do, mister?"

"I make video games."

"What? Really? Which ones? Which ones?"

"You ever heard of 'The King of Games'?"

"Nope!"

"…You will someday." Bakura meant it. He had a strong feeling that with the direction Kaiba was going, 'The King of Games' would not be over until they spawned the upcoming video game, an anime, a couple of spin-off series, and maybe a real-life trading card game… On second thought, maybe the TCG won't happen. Who in their right minds would play a game like that, anyhow?

"So you draw a lot?"

"…Yeah, that's part of my job, kid."

"Ooh! Ooh! Do you have any with you right now?"

"…A few."

"Can I see? Let me see! Please?"

Bakura shrugged modestly, but secretly pleased that there was someone interested in his artwork, even if it was a little girl. He had few people outside of Kaiba Corp to talk about his work to. "Bring my bag over here," he suggested, motioning to his worn messenger bag. Kyouko bounced off her seat, grabbed the large cotton bag by its strap and commenced dragging it on the floor.

"Hey! Careful! That stuff's really fuc— _Oh, just let me do it_."

"It's heavy," she commented as she let Bakura pull the bag up onto the seat next to him. As he examined the seams to inspect possible damage, Kyouko began to rifle though the bag's contents, and pulled out one of his several folders.

"This is so pretty!" she squealed, pointing to a half-done sketch of an elf-like monster card. "What's his name?"

Bakura took the drawing from her and attempted to read his horrible scrawls of handwriting. "Celtic Guardian," he read flatly. He had secretly nicknamed it "Frustrated Celtic Guardian" and drew it as such, simply because he was in the mood for ill-fated projection on defenseless creatures. Whether it would be accepted was another matter, and one that, just like the innocent monstrosity now christened Kuriboh, Bakura found he didn't really care about.

Quickly thumbing through the rest of the drawings, and then moving on to the other folders, Kyouko continued to let out squeals of delight or awe at the drawings, very effectively inflating Bakura's already buoyant ego.

"This picture is so cool, mister!"

"You're the best artist I know!"

"I like this one a lot!"

"This one's my favorite" was uttered at least half a dozen times. Indeed, Bakura was in a good place. He watched only with half-interest, contenting himself by listening to the praise being showered by one little girl.

"There's a bunch of writing on this one, mister. What is it?" Bakura looked at the paper in her hand, and realized in horror that she had found the research on haphephobia that he had done all those weeks ago. "I can't read it—" She flipped it over, and the already quickly deflating hot-air-filled balloon finally exploded in a loud burst, and let on a quick panic attack when the girl drew out-in slow-motion, it seemed— the picture that No-Mortal-Must-Ever-Lay-Eyes-Upon:

"Mister! Is this my dad—" Bakura swiftly clamped a hand over her mouth with a squawk. He looked up anxiously to see if Ryou had overheard, and was immensely relieved when he saw that the man had momentarily had his back turned to check the stove.

'Shit! I wrote my fucking notes on the same paper I drew Ryou!' he screamed silently. 'Good thing she's too young to read— _Damn it_! I wrote those notes in _pen_! Now the picture's _completely_ ruined!'

"Yes—I mean, no—I mean, maybe—" Bakura began to sputter out loud. Kyouko stared at him with wide eyes that seemed even more magnified by her glasses, muffling protests under his hand. He quickly snatched his hand back, and placed a index finger over his lips in an effort to command silence. "I practice drawing by doing real people sometimes," he lied quickly. "It's not important." He quickly grabbed the paper from her small hands, and slid it back in the folder before jamming it in his bag.

Kyouko opened her mouth to say something, but Bakura quickly silenced her by leaning down urgently. "Now look here, kid. You don't _ever_ tell your dad that I drew that, you hear?"

"…Okay," she agreed slowly. Then she smiled brightly. "I wouldn't have told Daddy anyway, 'cause I think he'll be happier if it looked more like him."

"…What?"

"It was a nice drawing, mister, but you made Daddy's eyes too dark."

Kyouko had found the single mistake of that picture faster than he, the one who drew it, had.

"Kyouko-chan!" Ryou's voice called him back from the sudden insane bumble of thoughts ricocheting in his head. "Take your bath now."

"Okay, Daddy!" she answered back. "See you later, mister!" She patted his shoulder reassuringly. "Don't worry, you can always draw a better picture of Daddy later! You're helping him get better now, that's why!" she whispered.

Bakura remained dumbfounded in his seat even after Kyouko ran out of the living room. It was once again Ryou's voice that yanked him back into reality.

"So?" Bakura turned to face Ryou, who had sat himself delicately on the seat opposite to him with a glass of water and was looking at him with a mixture of disapproval and expectancy.

"…You've got a smart kid there," Bakura said ineptly. Ryou furrowed his eyebrows in puzzlement, but then finally nodded. Bakura glanced down at the gloved hands that cradled the glass. "No one cooks with gloves on…You make her take a bath while you cook so she wouldn't see them, don't you?"

"…I do," Ryou answered in a tightlipped manner. He took a sip, as if to stifle anything else he planned to say.

"Since I was here today, you let her wait a while, since she'll be distracted by me instead." It was an accusation, not a hypothesis.

"You catch on quickly." Another sip.

'So it's going to just be small-talk, eh?' Bakura noted silently. 'Fine by me. Perfect time to scrape some info.' He took another glance at the piano. "How long have you been playing that?"

"…What does that have to do with you?" Ryou sounded suspicious.

Bakura scowled. "You're supposed to be getting more relaxed around people. Just answer it."

Ryou frowned back, but then took another sip before answering. "Since I was seven or so."

"Oh." Now what? "…So you've always wanted to be a piano teacher?"

"Yes." There was a pause, and after what seemed to be eternity on bated breath, "And you? For video games?"

"You heard me telling your kid that?" Bakura blinked in surprise, but then, upon contemplation, realized that Ryou listening in on anything he said seemed like a very Ryou-like thing to do. "Sort of." He shrugged. "My old man and lady wanted me to be a doctor or some bullshit like that. Family thing." He glanced at Ryou's skeptical expression. "I'm not lying. I came from a family of rich asshole doctors." He shrugged again. "Hell broke loose when I said I was going into art in college. Kicked me out." He thought back to it. "That was only about a few years ago, come to think of it…"

"…That's awful."

Bakura blinked in surprise again. Ryou sympathizing with him was uncanny, if not simply strange. "Whatever," he said after a quick recover. "I like my job at Kaiba Corp… Sort of. It pays enough for the rent and all."

"Your family doesn't keep in contact with you?" Another odd question.

"My sisters send a New Year's card from time to time."

"Your parents, I mean." Ryou's voice sounded urgent.

"Them? They call sometimes. Ask me to visit them."

"They… didn't cut you off completely?"

"No. They're my _parents_." Bakura was getting awfully confused over the rapid-fire of questioning he was being put under. "Why the hell would they do that? It's not like I murdered someone."

Ryou didn't answer. There was a long and awkward silence where neither moved, let alone speak. It went on like this for maybe ten more minutes, and Bakura longingly wished he had bought more cookies to eat, for it would have been something to do in this silence.

He stared at a certain part of the floor for a while, unsure as to what to say after leaving their last exchange on such an odd note. For some reason, it seemed wrong to ask Ryou any personal questions relating to him and his daughter, and even taboo to even mention how that relationship came into being.

"Daddy! I'm done! Is it time for dinner yet?" Kyouko skipped out into the living room.

"Just about," Ryou said tightly. He looked troubled, but Bakura knew better than to bring it up while Kyouko was here. Another day, then. Bakura stood up.

"I'm going to get going now," he announced.

"You're leaving already, mister?" Kyouko whined. She turned around to face her father. "Does that mean you're all better already, Daddy?" She reached out to clasp his hand, but Bakura quickly wheeled her around before she could catch Ryou flinch and fumble a step back.

"Hey, kid!" He tried to think of something to distract her. "What do you want me to bring next time? You want candy?"

"Candy…? Okay."

"I'll keep that in mind. Any favorites?"

"…No."

"Oh. Alright, I'll look for something…"

Kyouko grabbed his hand. "Are you coming back tomorrow?"

"Yeah…" He awkwardly mussed his hand in her hair. "See you around. No need to see me out or anything." He grabbed his bag as he walked toward the entrance, and slipped his shoes back on. "I'll give you a report after a few more times of coming around," he finally said vaguely to Ryou.

* * *

The second night came into being quickly. Bakura, true to his word, brought a large pack of hard candies for Kyouko this time. She was instantly dazzled by the vast array of colors the assorted flavors came in, and spent a long time choosing a few to keep. Bakura slid her a few more when Ryou wasn't looking.

The father of the little girl spent majority of the time in which Bakura was there, in the kitchenette, making dinner, which once again, Bakura wasn't invited to. Kyouko did not pay much attention to Ryou, for she was always preoccupied with Bakura and his antics. Bakura knew that he was being used as a diversion, but said nothing of it.

If Ryou could somehow get better in the long run, Bakura couldn't force himself to mind being used in such a way.

Ryou had just finished pulling his gloves back when he stepped out into the living room area. He silently walked over to his piano and began to wipe it with a large cloth, stiff and jerky in his movements.

Bakura frowned. The man had said nothing to him since their last private conversation last night. It rather seemed like the man was avoiding him.

"Daddy! Can you play something on your piano? Ooh— The one that you're going to play at that big music thingy in May?" Kyouko suddenly burst out, looking up from the tower of candies she was trying to build.

Ryou turned to face the beaming face of his child with his own pale, sickly complexion. "Kyouko-chan, you know I'm still writing it—"

"It sounds so pretty so far, though! Play the parts you finished...? Please?"

Bakura raised his eyebrows. "You're performing somewhere in May, Ryou?" Getting up, he strolled over to Ryou and the piano, hands in his pockets. Ryou gave a noticeable recoil at the close proximity.

"...Yes." It sounded rather pained.

"That's pretty cool. You're writing your own piece?" He deliberately stepped closer.

"...Yes." Ryou was beginning to panic; he gripped the cloth tightly in his hand, and held onto the ledge of the piano for some kind of invisible support.

"It's really important, too!" Kyouko boasted. "Daddy's playing piano so-sol—"

"Solo?"

"Yeah, mister!" Kyouko turned back to her father. "Can you play it for us, Daddy? I bet that this mister will like it just as much as I do."

Ryou cringed. "I-I'd rather not," he began. He kept his eyes on the keyboard cover. "I'd rather not..." he repeated in a mumble to himself.

"...Fine." Bakura turned around to walk back to where Kyouko and the candy tower were, letting Ryou relax again. "Some other time, maybe... When your dad's finished with it," he assured Kyouko.

"...Okay..."

* * *

The cycle repeated. Whenever Youtai Bakura had time, he would 'drop in' the Bakura residence. Yuugi was unable to wheedle anything out of the man, who felt that his encounters with the man and child were left better among the three of them only. Yuugi was displeased, but Bakura refused to relent.

There was never a conversation that quite took the same turn as the one that first night's in the many nights to follow. Ryou was terribly reluctant to expose anything of that nature again, and Bakura soon also gave up trying to pry information out of him. Though he could only agree that Ryou's behavior that night was strange, he could do nothing else but simply classify it as such.

Each visit, Bakura would make sure to bring a type of sweet confectionary for Kyouko that he shared with. Ryou would give him that same dirty look every time the other man waved a brightly colored package in the air for her, but he generally stayed away from any madness that his neighbor and his daughter were getting themselves into.

It was maybe after only four or more visits that Bakura began to get the sinking suspicion that Ryou was not improving in his relationships with Kyouko, or with people in general, at all. Ryou would always choose to stay in the safety of the kitchenette and keep watch on the two from there rather than join them in the living room. Even when Kyouko would go off to take a bath, Ryou never came any closer than sit silently in the sofa furthest away from Bakura, where he had first sat in Bakura's first visit.

In fact, it seemed at times that his social skills seemed to decay, as he began to look more and more uncomfortable every single time Bakura came by.

Tonight happened to be a night where Ryou was in a particularly moody disposition, where he border-lined on both anger and disdain as he sat there on the couch furthest from Bakura, glaring bitterly at him. Kyouko had gone to take another bath, leaving Ryou and Bakura alone in the living room.

Bakura stared back calmly as he munched slowly on a biscuit. Never once had he been invited for dinner, despite Kyouko's pleas, so he compensated by eating sugary, and quite crumbly snacks, instead. "I got a question."

Ryou's expression turned to one of irritation, but he said nothing to refuse it.

"You didn't expect me to make it past those four days, did you, Ryou?" Bakura began in the same cool tone. "You thought I'd give up, or somehow lie about it and that you'll be able to catch the smell of cigarettes on me at the door. I saw you. And that's why you don't have anything to say to me, now."

Ryou seemed to struggle between choosing either to start yelling, or ignore the question completely. "I won't deny that," Ryou finally answered delicately. "I have little faith in whatever you do, Youtai Bakura." Then his eyes narrowed— the hostile side was beginning to creep in its victory. "But I happen to know that you have little idea of what you want to do yourself— You keep saying you want to 'help' us," he continued, mocking the proclamation with a tilt in his tone, "…but all you've managed to do is sit around and leave a mess every time you leave."

"I'm observing—"

"You're treating us like lab rats!" Ryou hissed, standing up in unprecedented rage.

"Like _what_? I didn't do that—"

"_You _did nothing but listen to her talk—"

"_Well, I didn't see you make any effort to join in any of the damn conversations_!" Bakura drowned out Ryou's rising voice with a bellow. "You don't hang around your kid a lot," he continued. "You two come home after she gets off from school and a trip to the ice-cream place, which she and you don't even like that much. She plays with her animals. You…" he looked around at the impeccable apartment. "…Clean…daily. And work," he said, gesturing to the piano. "You make dinner while she takes a bath. Then she goes off to bed, and so do you. But only after she's asleep." He raised a white eyebrow. "That about right?"

Ryou flushed, in such a way that color fled oddly to the cheeks of his normally blood-drained face.

"Sit your ass back down, Ryou," Bakura snapped, crossing his arms and legs simultaneously. "We have to talk about this." Ryou hesitantly sat back into his seat, anger bubbling noticeably. "I can come over as often as I want, as often as your little girl wants, but you know what? It won't help that much. You know why?" He leaned forward. "You haven't even tried to get better yourself. You're either holed up in that kitchen the entire time, or you go clean the already-fucking-spotless furniture. I get to stay an hour every time I come over. An hour and a half max." Bakura scowled. "You know I'm not going to anything bad! I kept to my end— I quit smoking! _Why the hell are you still acting like this toward me_?" Bakura yelled. "Your kid hasn't caught on that you haven't been getting any better, but that's just for the time being.

"One part of me thinks that you just you just let me go on with this because you don't want to be a hypocrite. Bakura Ryou. You don't really think that me coming over would help— You _never_ thought it would."

Ryou recoiled at the words, and Bakura noticed that the other was clenching his fists as he continued.

"Well, it ends here. You either need to step out of your fucking comfort-zone right now, or you can keep holding on to it a little longer by letting me stay more than a fucking one and a half hour—"

"No."

"What? You're saying 'no'? 'No' to which one?"

"Both."

"What the fuck is wrong with you, Ryou?" Bakura roared. "If you're not going to fucking bother to _change_, are you just trying to waste my time on purpose?"

Bakura instantly regretted adding that last sentence when Ryou stood up again without warning. "_What the fuck did you say_? I'm wasting _your_ time?" Ryou screamed.

"Shit, I didn't mean it like that—"

"Do you know how _fucking hard _it is for me to do this, Youtai Bakura? I can't stand it! You _think I don't want to change_? You _think that I want to treat her like this_?"

"No, I—"

"_Shut up_! Just give up! I can't do this, alright?"

"Wait, what? Hey, don't you start saying shit like that! If it's still me, fine, I'll try to watch it or whatever—"

"It's not just you! It's everyone! I can't help it!" Ryou's tone drowned in crushed defeat. He choked out a strangled noise. "It doesn't matter _how_ you try to help, I can't do it! I _can't_—"

"Calm the fuck down, Ryou!" Bakura thundered, standing up as well. "Don't you fucking _dare_ tell me that you're giving up—"

"…Daddy? Mister?" Kyouko stood holding a sheet of paper in her hands, eyes wide and watery at the display in front of her. "Are you two okay?"

Ryou exhaled slowly, and slumped back into his seat. "We're fine, Kyouko-chan." His smile didn't quite meet his eyes. "What's that you're holding?"

"I-it's for school," she explained hesitatingly. She paused before entering the living room. "The teacher says you have to sign it, Daddy."

Ryou took the paper from her. "Oh, emergency information? Alright, I'll do it now… Let Daddy find a pen first, alright?" Getting up awkwardly from his seat, he clumsily tried to find something to write with from his desk.

As he turned his back to the others, Kyouko gave Bakura a questioning look, who just pursed his lips into a straight line and shook his head noncommittally.

"Alright, here," Ryou feebly handed the filled-out form back to her. "Kyouko-chan—I-I'm a little tired right now… Daddy's going to sleep for a bit, okay? I'll serve your dinner, and you can eat and call me up when you're done…"

"…But…" Kyouko's eyes adopted a more pronounced droop. "…Okay, Daddy. I'll be quiet."

"There's a good girl." He smiled weakly again. Turning to Bakura, the smile slipped away, but the expression in his eyes didn't change. "You can let yourself out," he said simply.

Turning around, Ryou numbly scooped out a bowl of rice and set a few side dishes on the small table, then went down the hallway and slid the bedroom door close behind him.

"What's wrong with Daddy?" Kyouko asked sorrowfully. "Should I go and make him feel better?"

"…He'll be alright by himself, kid. You know what? I'll keep you some company."

They sat themselves down in the small table. Kyouko set the form onto the table as well, as began to eat slowly while Bakura watched. Having nothing else to do, he took the form and looked through it.

"Hey, kid. You have an emergency contact number?"

Kyouko frowned. "Daddy didn't write one down?" she asked after swallowing a large gulp.

"No."

"Oh, no! Daddy has to sign everything! The teacher said mommies and daddies have to." She got up, and turned to go down the hallway to get her father.

"Hey, hey!" Bakura yanked her back. " Let him rest. Just tell me who it is; I'll write it down instead."

"Oh…" Kyouko sat back down. She thought silently for a moment.

"…Well?"

"I-I don't know anyone." Her lips wobbled.

"Not _one_?" Bakura sputtered. "…Your mother, maybe?"

"I d-don't know! I don't know her number…!" Kyouko began to wail. "I don't know who to use…!"

"Shh! I get it, alright?" Bakura hushed her with a frantic hand motion. "I'll write myself down." Fishing out a pen, he wrote in his name and cell phone number. "Oh, wipe those stupid tears," he muttered gruffly, tearing out a few tissues from a nearby tissue box. "Here, give me the glasses."

Kyouko sniffled, apparently content with his filling in the information, and took off her glasses for him to wipe. Bakura noticed that Ryou and Kyouko had really similar eyes— they were the same exact color and shape.

He longed to ask the question that he had wanted to find the answer to since he had met the girl— if the two were actually blood-related— but something told him now that not only would that question be highly inappropriate in a time like this, but also that knowing the answer to that question was hardly, if even, important.

"Finish your dinner," he ordered grumpily as he got up to wash the tear-stained glasses in the sink. Kyouko hiccupped again, and nodded. After running cool water on the lenses for a moment, he returned and wiped them down with a paper towel, then placed them roughly back onto her face.

"Thanks, mister," she rasped out. Bakura grunted, and leaned back on his knees, a bit uncomfortable at the gratitude. She swallowed another overly large clump of rice before tapping urgently at his arm. "Mister… Is Daddy getting better?"

"…Yeah, yeah, he is. He just needs… more time, that's all."

"… It doesn't look like Daddy's getting better. He's still…sad all the time… Even though you've been here so many times already…Maybe Daddy can't get better." Her tone was saturated with dejection.

"Hey!" Bakura barked. Kyouko jumped at the sharp tone. " I don't want you saying things like that!" She stared at him, frozen, but then nodded. Bakura sighed. "You trust me, kid?"

"…I guess so."

"No, not 'I guess so' or 'I guess not'. You trust me?"

"…Yes…"

"Good. Then just leave it up to me. Don't worry so much about it." He smirked. "You'll get white hair." He tugged at one of her pigtails. She giggled.

"You're funny, mister! I like you."

"Yeah, yeah…You don't have to keep calling me that, you know…" Kyouko looked at him questioningly. "'Mister'," he muttered irritably. "Quit calling me that. The name's Youtai Bakura."

Kyouko's eyes widened. "Is Bakura your first name?"

"…Yeah. So?"

The girl smiled crookedly. "Because it's mine and Daddy's last name!"

"…I know. So?"

Kyouko sniffled for the last time, and then tugged on his sleeve excitedly, jubilant once again. "So, does that make you like a mommy? Since your first name is the same as Daddy's last name—"

"Hold it!" Bakura jolted back from the girl. "You got it mixed up, kid. Two things," he managed to grit out. "One, wives take on the husband's last name as their last name. _Not_ their first." Kyouko seemed puzzled for a moment, but then nodded understandingly. "Second. I'm a man. Men aren't mommi— aren't mothers. _Ever_. Got that?"

"Oh… So you're more like an uncle?" Kyouko reasoned. "'Cause you look like you could be Daddy's age!"

Bakura thought silently for a moment. In actuality, it hardly seemed proper to consider a man who had just turned twenty three an "uncle" when he wasn't even related to the child, but yet, it was definitely more peculiar for a man the same age to be addressed as "Daddy".

Hmm. There goes an odd fact to consider..."…Sure," he finally said. "Whatever."

"Yay! I have a Daddy and a new uncle now!" Kyouko cheered, but then remembering that her father was resting, clapped a hand over her own mouth, and laughed with her eyes instead.

* * *

When Bakura returned home, it was nearing eight thirty or so. He took a quick shower, exhausted, and did all his necessary rituals before retiring into his bedroom. He paused as he set down his cell phone next to his pillow, and walked over to the balcony again.

Slowly opening the glass door and greeting the warm night air, he took a glance over to the side. The lights were on for a moment, and after a few moments, they went off.

Bakura grunted something unintelligible, and went back inside.

The next morning, he silently took the train to Kaiba Corp, allowing himself to sway to the movements of the train as he chewed on a piece of gum. He sighed, and rested his head against the metal wall behind his seat. Turning his head to the side, he gazed blankly out at the cityscape flying past him, trying to collect his thoughts.

Ryou had seriously scared him last night. The man really looked like he was about to have a breakdown.

Was Bakura making a mistake? His intentions seemed justifiable enough; it hardly seemed wrong for someone to cause someone else pain simply by being in the same room as the other. That was ridiculous, yet, somehow, Ryou managed to make it excruciatingly possible.

The day was a muggy one for April. It threatened to rain the entire day, judging by the gathering white clouds that smoked the sun out of sight.

'Nothing wrong with rain, though,' Bakura thought to himself. 'Without rain, there'd be no water for the world.'

It'd be selfish to demand no rain when there were so many others that needed it.

It'd be wrong to give up when the one person who needed its effects most was still patiently waiting.

It was around five twenty PM, just as the rain began to fall, though, when all hell broke loose.

Bakura muttered under his breath a series of colorful words as he snatched his ringing cell phone from his jeans. He scowled at the number. He didn't recognize it.

Flipping the phone open and planning to shut it just as quickly, Bakura paused when he heard what sounded like a young woman frantically repeating 'hello'. "…Hello?" he echoed cautiously.

"Hello, hello? Is this Youtai-san?"

"…Yeah."

"I'm Bakura Kyouko's teacher from Domino Elementary School, Watanabe Akiko—"

"What? How'd the hell you get my number?"

"Excuse me? Your contact information is written for her emergency contacts—Sir, I have to ask you to pick up Bakura Kyouko from school."

"…Wait, _what_? Where's her dad?"

"Bakura Ryou hasn't come to pick his daughter up today, sir. He was supposed to be here over two hours ago, and we have tried to contact him multiple times, but he hasn't answered any of our calls."

* * *

**Author's Note: **The only **YGOTAS** reference was really brief, if not obscure: "Frustrated Celtic Guardian."


	9. Trouble

On the train to take him to Domino Elementary School, Bakura ground his teeth nervously. His mind was a complete blank, but he couldn't stop the cold sweat forming over his back and neck.

'Something's wrong.' That was all the man could coherently think about. 'Holy shit, something's _wrong_.'

_Bakura was silent for a good few seconds on his end of the line before a cold, prickly sensation ran down his spine. "…You can't contact him?"_

"_No, we've tried to call him, but—"_

"_You tried calling home? On his cell phone? At his work?"_

"_Y-yes. No one picked up at home or on his cell phone— When I called his workplace, they just said that he left at regular time, a few hours ago, actually—"_

"_Holy fucking god."_

"_Err— Youtai-san? I'm asking you again if you can pick Bakura Kyouko up—"_

"_What'd you tell the kid?"_

"_Excuse me?"_

"_Does Kyouko know her dad's not coming?"_

"_No, um, we didn't tell her about… um… the problem. A couple of the staff members are tending to her in one of the classrooms at the moment—"_

"_I'm coming over. You call me if he does contact you." Bakura hung up and grabbed his jacket from his chair. "Shit! Where the hell is he now—Mutou!" he bellowed out into the splay of cubicles before him. "Mutou! Where the fuck are you?"_

"_Present!" Yuugi's spiky head appeared into view from the break room. "Youtai-kun? What's up?"_

"_Cover my ass if Kaiba comes in— I'm leaving early today."_

"_What? Why?"_

_Bakura was already halfway out the door with his umbrella and bag. "Just do it!" he bellowed as he yanked on his jacket._

Bakura tapped his fingers impatiently against the metal pole he was holding onto for support. Taking out his phone now, he dialed Ryou's cell phone number, which that woman had given to him. She had paused before giving Ryou's contact information to him, probably wondering why he did not have such information already.

There was no answer. There wasn't even a dial tone. He groaned inwardly and flipped his phone shut, shoving it back into his jeans.

'Fuck you, Ryou!' he hissed to himself. 'Where the fuck are you? What the hell do I tell your kid?'

Trying to think of what could he possibly say to Kyouko when he gets there, a headache began to throb in the side of his head.

'Shit, I can't make something up, can I?' he thought to himself. 'Damn it! What the hell do I say to her? 'Yeah, your dad suddenly dropped off the face of the fucking planet?'" His face scrunched up in horror. "Fuck, I can't say that…Damn— what should I say—"

"_We are now arriving at Haruda Station_."

'_Shit_!'

Bakura rushed quickly to the small school building, pushing past unfortunate innocent pedestrians that happened to be in his way with his umbrella tilted forward as a spear. He stalked into the school's courtyard, almost slipping when he slid into a inconveniently formed puddle on the soaking ground.

Looking about for a moment, he finally located the runny figures distorted by water on glass of a few adults and a sole white-haired child in a classroom at the side of the building. Quickly jogging up to the classroom, he shut his umbrella under the awning and turned to knock on the sliding door.

"Bakura-san!" a woman breathed in a relieved tone, pushing open the door and stepping out before he could knock. "—We're so glad that you've arrived. Your daughter is inside waiting—" She stopped and stared at Bakura with a confused expression. "Ba-Bakura Ryou?"

"_Youtai_ Bakura," Bakura snapped, shaking droplets of water off of his umbrella.

"Oh! I'm so terribly sorry— You two have a very strong resemblance in appearance—" the woman began in a flushed apology.

"Save it, lady," Bakura interrupted. "So I'm guessing no more calls." The teacher nodded. "No contact whatsoever." She nodded again.

He exhaled. "I'm just gonna bring her home and stay with her… 'Til her dad calls or something," Bakura muttered.

"Thank you," the woman whispered gratefully.

"Where's the kid?"

"Yes, yes, she's over here—" The teacher nodded and turned around. "Come here, Kyouko-chan! Look who's here to pick you up!" she called out loudly into the room enough to get Kyouko's attention.

"Daddy!" Kyouko screamed gleefully, dropping a fistful of colored pencils she was scribbling with. "You're here!" She, too, stopped when she recognized Bakura. "Oh! Hi, ji-chan."

It didn't take a genius to hear the disappointment in her tone.

"No need to sound so happy to see me," Bakura muttered under his breath. "Your dad's…busy at the moment, kid. I'm bringing you home today."

"Really? 'Cause it feels like… a really long time since all the other kids left!"

The teachers exchanged meaningful glances with each other. Bakura cleared his throat.

"Oh, yeah?" Bakura asked absent-mindedly as he stepped awkwardly into the bright room and picked up her jacket. "How long, you think?"

"I don't know. Maybe… Maybe… twenty-four and a half minutes?"

"That right?" Bakura had a little trouble swallowing the bile that had slowly crept up his esophagus. "Only that long?"

It had been more like three hours.

"What's Daddy doing, ji-chan?"

"It's a surprise, probably. I don't know," Bakura explained ineptly. He squatted uncomfortably as he helped her put on her jacket.

"Oh, okay!"

Bakura cleared his throat again, and prayed that Kyouko couldn't feel his sweaty palms as she took his hand. Slinging her book bag over his other shoulder, he muttered a quick farewell to the teachers and pulled her outside.

"Daddy asked you to come to school?" Kyouko asked as she trotted faithfully alongside him in the rain, which had now lessened to a drizzle.

" Yeah, yeah…"

"So he's happy again? 'Cause he didn't look happy when he went away."

Bakura stopped in his tracks, balancing his umbrella on his shoulder in such a way that the cool metal of the retractable shaft chilled his neck. "…What do you mean, 'went away'?"

"When he said 'Bye-bye, Kyouko-chan' this morning!" Kyouko said. "Daddy looked sad." She let go of Bakura's hands and pulled down the corners of her lips to illustrate her point. "Like this. See? See?"

"He says that every morning, doesn't he?" Bakura felt the familiar bile-in-throat sensation again.

An unsettling possibility surfaced: 'Holy _shit_. Could it be that Ryou just upped and _left_ the kid?'

"Yep!" Kyouko beamed. "Every day, Daddy says, 'Bye-bye, Kyouko-chan' in the morning, and I say, 'See you later, Daddy!' And then after school, Daddy asks me, 'Do you want to go to the ice cream place, Kyouko-chan?' and I say…" she paused. "I say, 'Okay, Daddy.'" She craned her neck up to look at Bakura. "I think that Daddy likes going there a lot. He goes there every day."

That momentary clutch on something in his chest released its hold.

"Oh." Bakura shook his head, ridding his mind of such awful thoughts. "Oh, so that's it."

There was a light feeling of shame that Bakura felt blanket over him.

"Are we going to the ice cream place today?"

"No. Home."

"Okay…Are we taking Daddy's car back home, ji-chan?"

"No. The train."

"Why?"

'_Don't know where his car is.' _Bakura cleared his throat. "Don't know how to drive."

"You should get Daddy to teach you, then!"

"…Yeah. Yeah, maybe."

* * *

Kyouko had apparently never taken a train before. She spent most of her time with her face pressed against the windows, taking in the sights granted by the heights at which the two rode at.

As she ogled outside, Bakura sat stiffly at her side with her book bag on his lap, rubbing his fingers nervously against his phone, which he made sure to keep out of her sight.

Darting his eyes over to her direction to make sure her attention was completely directed, he turned slightly in the opposite direction and called Ryou's cell phone number once more. As like last time, there was no dial tone. He then tried the home number. It rang for a good fifteen seconds before a mechanical voice suggested he leave a message. Bakura hung up.

He silently ushered Kyouko out of the station when they reached their stop, and juggled his umbrella and her bag as he walk her out onto the sidewalk. He dreaded the idea of going back to the apartment building, and every step felt heavier than the last as the white-haired duo entered the lobby and then the elevator.

An unsettling sensation that continued to gnaw at his insides made him reel with panic and anxiety as Kyouko pressed the lighted elevator buttons along the side.

He usually would have gone straight to his cigarettes at a time like this, a time where there were infinitely more upsetting questions than there were answers, but then he quickly reprimanded himself— he was supposed to be quitting that habit.

Speaking of which, that dare seemed like such a long time ago, how he had said that he would be able to quit smoking in order to help the father and daughter. Bakura snorted to himself. Help who again?

One was still oblivious, and the other one had now even gone missing.

A familiar prickly sensation returned.

What the hell happened to Ryou?

"Is Daddy at home?"

Bakura swallowed uncomfortably. "No, probably not yet."

"When will he be home?"

Kyouko waited as Bakura struggled to think of a satisfying answer.

"Soon, I hope," Bakura muttered. He ran a clammy hand over his hair as the pair stepped out onto the sixth floor hallway. "Soon… What do you say to looking around your uncle's place for awhile? You know, 'til your dad gets home…?"

"Okay!"

Bakura ushered her into his apartment with an impatient push. "You have a lot of space, ji-chan!" Kyouko remarked as she bounced up and down on the rusty spring couch.

Bakura grunted noncommittally as he set her bag and his umbrella down on the floor, then stepped back outside. He strode briskly over to Ryou's apartment, and jammed the doorbell several times in succession.

'Come on… Be sleeping or something…' There was no answer, though that was what the man most likely expected. Bakura let out a nervous whine, and hurried back into his own apartment.

He walked over to the windows and peeked out. There was no white-haired man in sight.

Nervously picking at his fingers, the man paced back and forth in the small living area as Kyouko did her own little version of exploring.

'I need a fucking cigarette,' he thought grimly. Distractedly bringing his thumb up to his lips, he began to bite at it until he realized that doing that was rather painful.

Drawing it back out with a disgusted expression, he turned desperately into the kitchenette, hoping to find some sort of food to substitute a cigarette. There was nothing; he had left his last bag of chips at work, and had been in too much of a rush to pick up Kyouko to replenish his depleted stock.

Disappointed, he then turned to Kyouko, who was flipping through messy scrawls he had left on top of his table there.

"You want anything, kid?"

Kyouko looked up. "I'm a little thirsty," she admitted.

"Fine." Bakura strode nervously over to his refrigerator and opened it. "What do you want to drink?"

"Mmm… orange juice."

Bakura made an incredulous face into his fridge. All he had was beer and soda, the latter for when Yuugi would undoubtedly make his future, unplanned visits. "Don't have orange juice."

"Grape juice?"

"No."

"Pear juice?"

"They _make that_—? Whatever— No."

"…Apple juice?"

"Kid, I think I've made it pretty clear that I don't have any juice here!" Bakura snapped. "Soda. Water. That's it."

Kyouko looked down at her knees. "Daddy doesn't let me drink soda. He says it's bad for my health."

Bakura threw up his hands in noiseless frustration. 'Fuck! I can't do this! I can't _fucking do this_!' he howled silently. He slammed the door shut. "You're getting water."

"Okay."

'I'm not cut out to be a parent,' Bakura thought darkly to himself as he shuffled to the sink to rinse a glass. 'Shit, this is a woman's job.' He paused.

This was what Ryou had to do every single day until Kyouko would be old enough to take care of herself... "Woman's job" or "man's job"...he had to do them all. Well, the man probably would have every type of juice possible under the sun in his own refrigerator, but that was beside the point: Ryou must be under a tremendous amount of pressure being a single father who not only had to struggle with his own troubles, but balance that with his work and oversee every aspect of his child's life as well.

It didn't help that the man was still so young.

Ryou shouldn't have to be working and taking care of two lives alone at the same time in just his early to mid twenties.

Bakura filled up the glass with some water and handed it to Kyouko, who took the large glass with both her hands.

"You have a really young dad, you know that, kid?" he suddenly blurted.

"Uh-huh." Kyouko thanked him and took a gulp. "All the other daddies at school look older than my daddy…" She thought for a moment, lips in a pout. "All the mommies, too." Then she grinned. "But Daddy said that 'that doesn't matter, Kyouko-chan'."

Bakura sat down beside her, warily watching her hold on the cup so that she wouldn't spill the drink. "Is that right?"

"Yup! 'Cause he said, 'All that matters is that I'm your father, and nothing else'," she explained proudly, taking another gulp. She made a face. "It tastes funny, ji-chan." She looked down in the glass. "The water looks kinda yellow."

Bakura rubbed his temples. "It's just a little alcohol. It won't kill you." His bad dish-washing skills never bothered himself so much; he only ever drank beer out of glasses or beer cans anyway.

Kyouko made a face and opened her mouth to say something. She hesitated, though, and just pushed the glass away. "I'm not thirsty anymore,' she announced. Bakura exhaled in an attempt to calm himself down and set the water onto the table.

Kyouko suddenly sneezed.

"You cold or something?"

"A little."

Bakura got up from his seat to close the door, which he realized he had left ajar in hopes that Ryou would perhaps waltz out into the hallway and whisk Bakura's current dilemma right off of his lap.

No such thing happened.

Picking at his fingers again, he moved to close it, until something that he overheard caught his attention.

"—Yeah, well, hope you find him then, Bakura—"

Bakura's head jerked to the side to pinpoint where the voice came from.

It was Jounouchi, who just hung up a call on his cell phone as he stepped out of his own apartment.

"Fuck! _You—_ _Jounouchi_! Were you talking to Bakura _Ryou_?"

"Huh—?" Jounouchi looked up. "Hey, Youtai! What are the odds of that? Yeah, Bakura just called me to get your number—"

Bakura's cell phone suddenly rang. The man yanked it out of his jeans and fumbled to open it.

"Ry—?"

"_Where is she_?" a voice that sounded more like a myriad of harpies shouted, enraged, into his ear.

It _was_ Ryou.

"What the—? Hey, where fuck have _you_ been is the question here!" Bakura bellowed back. "Do you know how fucking worr—"

"_You _shut the _fuck _up and _listen to me_!" Ryou shrieked. "Where's my _daughter_?"

"What do you mean, where— What the fuck is your _problem_? She's obviously _here—_"

"Put her on the line _right now_!"

"Fine! Damn it!" Bakura stormed back to the door of his apartment. "Take the phone, kid—it's your freaking father."

"Daddy?" She ran to Bakura, who flung her the phone haphazardly. "Daddy!" she greeted happily into the mouthpiece "—Huh? Yeah, ji-chan is here with me— _ji-chan_— Uh-huh. Mister. Uh-huh… I'm okay. Ji-chan is really nice to me— You're coming home now, Daddy? Ten minutes? Okay, okay—Bye bye."

Kyouko returned the disconnected call to Bakura. "Daddy's coming home soon," she repeated with a grin.

"He tell you where he was all this time?"

"…No… What do you mean by 'all this time', ji-chan?"

Jounouchi looked from a seething Bakura to the blinking child. "Um, I think I missed something here."

Bakura, finally remembering Jounouchi's presence, turned to him. "We have to talk." Pulling him over to the side, he began to question him in a soft enough voice so that Kyouko wouldn't be able to hear. "When the fuck did Ryou call you?" he hissed, peripheral vision catching Kyouko giddily jumping up and down.

Jounouchi scratched his head, unaware of the reason behind the urgency in Bakura's tone. "Just now— He said he wanted your number, and he said it was important, so I gave it to him. Why, what happened?"

"The man was fucking missing for like a fucking three or four hours— _I_ had to leave work when I got a fucking call that he didn't pick up his kid—_I_ had to go get his daughter in the fucking pouring rain—_I_ had to pretend that nothing was fucking wrong all this fucking time!"

Jounouchi's jaw dropped open. "Seriously? Bakura was missing?" He continued scratching his head distractedly. "Wow."

"No, not just 'wow'!" Bakura screamed, pissed off that no one seemed to be taking this as seriously as he was. "What did he _say_?"

"That's all he said!" Jounouchi exclaimed indignantly. "He asked me where you were, and I didn't know, so I just gave him your cell phone number."

"Oh, you're no fucking help—" Bakura flipped open his phone again and searched for the number with which Ryou had just contacted him with. Pressing the button to dial it, he waited impatiently for Ryou to pick up. After a few rings, Bakura became clear that the man was not going to answer. "What the fuck?" he bellowed.

"That won't work, man," Jounouchi explained. "No one's gonna pick up. The guy was using a pay phone when he called me."

"_What_? How do _you_ know?"

"He told me. I had to _look_ for your number, so he told me he'll call me again after I found it since he was using a pay phone."

"Why the fuck wasn't he using his cell phone?" Bakura yelled.

"…Well, _I_ don't know." Jounouchi looked at him carefully. "Hey, man. I actually have to leave right now… You'll be okay by yourself and Kyouko?"

"What the hell are you talking about?" Bakura snapped cagily.

"…You're acting kind of…really intense right now."

"I'm _fine_!"

Bakura was actually not 'fine'. This display of odd emotional venting was an example of precisely why he was hesitant on quitting smoking in the first place. Unable to calm himself down with cigarettes, and now even food, Bakura was teetering on the edge of a chasm.

"…Uh, I actually don't think so. Tell you what. I'm staying at least 'til the guy comes back. How's that? I'll have to make a call with my date, first."

"Whatever!" Bakura shouted. "Do what you want! That's what everyone is fucking doing to me now, anyway!" He stalked back to the door of his apartment, where he decided he would wait for that white-haired, ungrateful bastard.

"—Hey, I just called to say I can't make it yet. Oh, it's you, Mo—"

Kyouko tugged on Bakura's arm, distracting him. "Is ten minutes a long time, ji-chan?"

"Yes. Too long," Bakura snapped. "Long enough that my patience will definitely fucking break before he fucking gets here."

Kyouko's voice wavered. "Are you mad at Daddy now?"

"Of course I'm not mad—I'm just fucking incredibly _pissed—_"

"God, Youtai!" Jounouchi exclaimed, putting his phone away, apparently done with his call. "Easy with that, would you, man? Bakura's already on his way back— Why are you still so uptight?"

"No one gets it, do they?" Bakura roared. "Everyone just conveniently forget all the shit I had to put up with these last few weeks— Fucking running around in the rain, fucking headaches from quitting smoking—which I never should have fucking done, fucking Kaiba, fucking thankless, haphepho—"

"Hey!" Jounouchi suddenly interrupted indignantly. Then he frowned. "Wait, what did you say? Haphe—?"

"Kyouko-chan!"

"Daddy!" Kyouko squealed loudly at the sound of her father's voice. Bakura and Jounouchi cut short their conversation to face the owner of the voice.

"About fucking time you got here—" Bakura began. Then he stared. "What the fuck happened to _you_?"

The man was sporting a cast over his entire lower right arm, and several small gashes over the other side of his face. Ryou simply shot him a look of utter loathing before turning his attention back to his daughter.

"Daddy! Are you hurt?" Kyouko reached up to touch Ryou's arm.

"No!" Ryou quickly pulled his injured arm back, and everyone except the little girl saw him wince terribly. Kyouko retracted her own hand as well, hurt. "Please don't touch that…K-Kyouko-chan, come on. Take your things and go back home first." He struggled in taking out his keys from his coat pocket, which was on the opposite side of his good arm, but finally succeeded in doing so.

He opened the door, and waited impatiently for Kyouko to pick up her book bag that still resided in Bakura's living room before silently rushing his daughter inside, who waved a short good-bye to the other two men.

"Bakura, man! What happened to you, dude?"

"I-I'll explain to you later, Jounouchi-san—" Ryou muttered.

"…Alright…If you say so." The blond sighed. "Well, if you guys are okay with it… I'll leave you two now."

"Yes, of course," Ryou answered dismissively. "Thank you." Jounouchi nodded again, eyes going from one white-haired man to the other slowly. Then he turned and left.

"Inside," Ryou muttered tonelessly to Bakura. Both men walked into Bakura's apartment.

After shutting the door behind him, Bakura spoke up first, pointing accusingly at Ryou. "You'd better start fucking explaining what the hell you were doing with your little fucking David Copperfield stunt—"

"What the hell was your contact information doing in my daughter's emergency papers, Youtai Bakura?" Ryou seethed.

_What?_

"What the hell does that have to do with _anything_—?"

"'What does that have to do with anything'?" Ryou repeated with faint disbelief. "I called the school, only to have the staff tell me that someone I wasn't _fucking aware of _pick up my child!"

"Hey! You were the one who didn't write anything next to emergency contact in the first place, you _son of a bitch_! The kid didn't want to wake you up, so I wrote my name there instead—"

"You had no right to do that!" Ryou screamed.

Something ignited in Bakura. "Fuck _you_!" he screeched. "I went out of my way to pick up your daughter when you were who-knows-the-fuck where!"

"No one _ever _told you to do that," Ryou snarled.

"What the fuck—I couldn't just leave her there at school! I did it because it was the only thing I could do! I couldn't contact you or anything—"

"You want me to appreciate what you've done, Youtai Bakura?" Ryou screamed. "I nearly had a bloody heart attack when I found out Kyouko was gone—"

"She was with _me_!" Bakura screeched back. "_Nothing_ would have happened to her, Ryou! _Nothing_!"

"And how the _fuck_ am I supposed to know that?"

Bakura slammed a fist against the wall. "You're not! Because you're supposed to fucking _trust_ me!" Then he narrowed his eyes. "Oh, it all comes back to that, doesn't it?" He stalked over to where Ryou was, glaring menacingly into his face. "You and _your fucking trust issues—_"

Hysteria was quickly overcoming the man. Anxiety had a good strangling hold on him now, and Bakura was beginning to find it hard to breathe throughout the tightening throat, pounding head, and the slightest exasperated moist heat forming in his eyes.

"This has _nothing_ to do with that—"

"You _liar_!" Bakura bellowed, closing in the gap between them. "Just admit it! _Admit it_!"

"I'm tired of your fucking bullying, Youtai Bakura!" Ryou screeched. "_Don't for a fucking second think that that'll work on me_!"

He shoved Bakura away with his uninjured elbow, effectively knocking him away.

"I hate people like you, Youtai Bakura— People who think that all they need is a little physical intimidation and that will shut everybody else up—"

"What the fuck are you going on about _now_?"

" What makes you think I can trust you? Nothing! You have _nothing_!" Ryou took a much needed breath of fresh oxygen within the heated atmosphere. "It was a fucking mistake to get you involved in all of this in the first place," he said, contempt further poisoning his speech.

Offended.

Bakura had possibly never been as offended by someone or something as much as at this moment. It wasn't only his suffering of increased anxiety as a result of cold-turkey-quitting that was talking when he replied to Ryou's inexcusable hostility:

"_You're not getting rid of me_…!" he screamed back as Ryou stormed out of the apartment. "Because I fucking _quit_! _Get the fuck out of here_!" In a fit of rage, he slammed his door shut as loud as humanly possible.

* * *

A few hours later, after the heat had dissipated some and whatever was lodged in his throat loosened, Bakura began to think again. He downed his can of beer furiously as he scratched his pencils irritably against his sketch papers, unable to take out his frustration on anything, except work.

Thinking about Ryou made the heat in his temples throb.

"I get told shit for being a good person for once," Bakura muttered to himself hoarsely. "How fucking fair. How. Fucking._ Fair_."

He could almost laugh at the injustice of it all, except a wretched sensation in his chest made it impossible to get a single sound of amusement out.

His house phone rang. Bakura thought about not getting it, having enough of his fair share of ill phone calls. A tiny voice inside thought otherwise.

'Maybe it's Ryou on the other end,' the voice suggested hopefully.

"And why the hell would that be possible?" Bakura shot back to himself. "Not like I'm gonna fucking pick up if it's that fucking bastard."

_Brrrrrr._

'Are you _sure_?' the voice prodded. 'You one hundred ten percent sure that you won't?'

"Yeah." Bakura snorted. "There will be nothing on this whole damn planet that would make me answer if it's him."

_Brrrrrr._

'How about if he wants to apologize for saying all that crap to you? How about that? Hmm? _Hmm_?'

_Brrr— _"Who the hell is it?"

"Yes, yes? Is this Bakura?"

Bakura froze. He recognized this voice. Only one person was able to put that annoying tilt to every word he said. "_Marik_?"

"What? You sound surprised."

"Why the fuck are you calling me?"

"Can't a friend ring a friend up?"

"Ring, my ass. What do you want, Marik?" But Bakura's words did not match his tone. Bakura was smiling now, and leaned back on his couch.

"I know it's been a while, but I got my first paycheck today," Marik said. "And since I know what meager salary you have—"

"Old place. Half an hour."

The cool air was good for his headache. Even though it was nearing the end of April, there were still sporadic evening breezes blowing about in the city, and when Bakura entered the bar he frequented with minutes to spare, he had calmed himself almost completely. It was already quite filled, but he recognized his long time childhood friend from anywhere.

"And you wonder why people think you're gay," Bakura began with a smirk, crossing his arms as he stood next to a tanned man sitting at the counter.

"What? What are you talking about? Hey, I'll have you know that I like women."

"No doubt. That's probably why you dressed yourself like one."

The bleach-blond haired young man's earrings jangled loudly as the man looked down at his white midriff. "Oh, you mean this?"

"Half your stomach is showing, Marik. You're wearing leather pants and you have enough jewelry on your body to sink you in water. And what the hell is that crap you drew under your eyes?"

"Just because a guy likes to dress effeminately, hang around with another extremely attractive man—meaning you, by the way— and flaunt his gorgeous abs does not automatically make him gay."

"Of course not. I'm talking about everything else." Bakura rolled his eyes, and sat down beside his friend.

"What's that supposed to mean—? Speaking of which, we should share beauty tips; I love what you do with your hair."

"…Maybe some other time." Bakura smiled as he drank from his mug.

"How's the job, Bakura? Regret being a video game designer instead of a doctor like me?"

Bakura sneered. "Never."

"You know, you haven't changed a bit since I saw you last."

"Yeah?"

"You're still an asshole."

Bakura smirked. "I try."

"My point exactly— What the eff is that woman staring at us for?"

Bakura looked up. Sure enough, there was a young curvy woman looking almost disgustedly in their direction. She looked oddly familiar, but Bakura couldn't really quite place where he had seen her before. When their eyes met, the woman quickly averted her's.

"Do you think she's jealous of me?" Marik suggested. "I mean, you do agree I look better than her, right?"

Bakura snorted into his mug. "Right, that's the reason."

"Yeah, that's right," Marik yelled back at the woman. "Be jealous!" He turned to Bakura. "Oh! I have a funny story to tell you. I was in the emergency room today..."

"…As the doctor, right?"

"Hmm? Yes, yes. I get your joke, Bakura. Very amusing. Anyway, some pretty boy that looked exactly like you came in—"

Bakura spewed out his drink. "What?"

"What the hell is the _matter with you_?" Marik wiped away a few of the rogue droplets off his clothes. "I can't get these wet, you know." he said, rubbing at his pants.

"What's that about your patient?"

"What? Don't you want to talk about us?"

"No. We've already established the fact that we hate each other very much, Marik. There's not much more to say about it."

"As you wish." Marik tossed his long hair over one of his tanned shoulders. "Some man came into the hospital at like, two in the afternoon today. Some eff-ing car crash into a wall or something."

Bakura's eyes bugged out. "A car _accident_?"

"Well, the guy wasn't that hurt or anything. No major damage," Marik said dismissively. "The funny thing was how much he looked like you. Like an eff-ing cookie print. He even had the same name— well, your first name."

"Yeah, hilarious," Bakura muttered.

"None of those injuries ought to have hurt that much. But hell, when he regained consciousness, he let out the most blood-curdling scream. Ever." Marik made a face. "The nurses were just trying to put on the freaking medicine on his face and freaking get his arm in a cast. Seriously. You would have thought we were about to stab him with needles or something."

"…Or cigarettes," Bakura muttered lowly to himself.

"What was that?"

"Nothing." Bakura sat up straighter. "So then what happened?"

"He fell unconscious again, and then woke up and left."

"…That's it?"

"Well, yes, that's all that happened." Marik tapped his chin. "Wait. There was something interesting about his hands—He had really nice hands. Like a pia—"

"Pianist," Bakura cut in.

"Yes, yes, like that. But there were these odd little marks on them— couldn't really get a good close look at them, but I think they looked like burn marks or something. Shame."

"…How old?"

"Eh?"

"How old were they?" Bakura repeated impatiently. "The burn marks."

"Well, they wouldn't have been that recent— I told you, I didn't get too good of a look at them. Had too much to do, and then he put on these rather ugly gloves right before he left." Marik tossed his hair back again. "But I'd say they were from at least several years back."

"…I see."

"God, he was certainly peeved off about the cast. I told him that he could have it off in less than two months, but he wouldn't listen to me— like it was the freaking end of the world."

Ryou had a piano recital coming up, Bakura recalled. Now he'd have to cancel… after all that work on preparing his piece, too. No wonder he'd be pissed off.

"Hey, I noticed you haven't taken out a single cigarette this entire time."

"Quitting. Started a couple of weeks back." Bakura paused. "You're a doctor and shit, Marik. Why didn't you ever get on my case about smoking?"

Marik shrugged. "I would think that growing up like how you did was enough. Would you have stopped even if I told you that you were killing yourself?"

Bakura thought about Yuugi. "No."

"There you go, then." Marik stretched. "So why'd you finally quit?'

"Had to."

"You found a good enough reason? I thought you smoked because you had anxiety problems."

"How the fuck did you know about that?"

"Oh, please, Bakura. I've eff-ing know you since we were in that goddamn awful boarding school. Is that why you started smoking?"

Bakura grunted. "Debatable. Got stressed a lot."

"So you _did_ find something else—"

"What do you know about phobias, Marik?"

"Why?"

Bakura thought about explaining the entire story to Marik.

'_You had no right to do that!' _

'_You want me to appreciate what you've done, Youtai Bakura?' _

'_I'm tired of your fucking bullying—' _

'_I hate people like you—'_

'_What makes you think I can trust you?' _

'_It was a damn mistake to get you involved in all of this in the first place_.'

Bakura sighed into his mug.

'You're not getting rid of me_…! Because I fucking _quit!'

"Forget it."

* * *

Bakura woke up the next day with a manageable hangover. It was worth it, he supposed, as he brushed his teeth slowly, staring at his haggard reflection in his tiny bathroom mirror.

He spat out the sudsy water, and grabbed a towel to wipe his face with.

Marik was a good person to talk to, he realized. He needed to talk to people more often. Of course, he had known Marik for an insanely long time— since he was shipped off to a private boarding school filled with obnoxious, stuck-up little boys many, many moons ago. Marik had been odd one out, just like he was, and they became fast companions.

Their paths did diverge, though, in the end. Marik became what Bakura's parents wanted their only son to become— a doctor, whereas Bakura became a far cry from anything as glamorous.

But they were still friends, as offbeat as their relationship was. Sometimes they didn't talk to each other for months at a time, one or the other being too busy with his own life. But once in a while, just once in a while, a little serious talk could be a good thing.

Bakura slung his bag over his shoulder, and walked out his front door.

It was over, this whole thing with Ryou, wasn't it? Now that he had sufficiently calmed down, and hasn't had a drink in the last two hours, that whole blowout was really rubbing itself in his face.

"Great. I fucked up my only chance of fixing shit with Ryou. I'm never going to fucking figure out anything about him now, or even come close to why the hell I want to figure it out in the first place. My fucking big fat mouth really did the job this time— _Quitting_? I said _that_? What the hell was wrong with me?" Bakura groaned out loud in the elevator. "And here I am, talking to myself out loud— Again!" He clutched at his bangs, and had the childish urge to stomp his feet.

He did it. Not like anyone was watching.

"Fuck my life."

Yet there was one more person more unfortunate than Bakura was; there was one person who was possibly the most unluckiest person Bakura had ever met that now had to suffer because of some unresolved bickering between two immature men:

Kyouko.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

Hey! That woman that was hitting on Bakura way back from Chapters 3 makes a reappearance— Marik thinks she's jealous of him, but we all know why she was really staring at them...:)

Marik has his non-obligatory cameo in this chapter. Try to imagine his voice in the parody, the readers who like the series... He sort of was pretty important in sorting out Bakura's head, I think. There is something important that Bakura will take away from their meeting that he will use in a later chapter—I say this so that Marik's introduction is justified. Ahem.

The few references I used in this chapter stem from the conversation in the bar. Marik complimenting Bakura about his hair is one, and there are snippets about Marik's physical appearance that I also borrowed from **YGOTAS** as well.


	10. Wrappers

Bakura tried to keep his mind off of Ryou and Kyouko when he arrived at work. Yuugi was already there at his own seat, whistling some tune or the other as he made a few lines on his drawing tablet.

After flopping into his seat and grunting a reply to Yuugi's customary cheerful "good morning", Bakura dug around in his jacket and opened a pack of gum. There was no point in buying the powdery snacks anymore, since he wouldn't be able to leave any crumbs on Ryou's couch for any longer. He exhaled slowly and glumly tossed the strip into his mouth as he crushed the foil wrapper in his other hand.

Yuugi looked up at the crinkling noise. "Hey! Is that gum?"

"What the hell else could it be?" Bakura snapped.

Yuugi held out his hand expectantly, and Bakura pushed the box over to him as he turned on the monitor. Yuugi frowned. "Oh, I don't want the gum, just the wrapper."

"What the hell are you gonna do with a fucking wrapper?" Bakura asked irritably, looking for the tiny ball he had tossed to the side. He found it, and tossed it over to Yuugi. "It's trash."

"You never did this when you were a kid, Youtai-kun?" Yuugi smoothed out the foil on the desk.

"Did _what_?"

"A collage made out of the wrappers! I did it all the time when I was little— You know, you peel off the shiny part and you stick it on to stuff."

"… You're peeling off the _foil_?"

"Something beautiful can raise itself out of what appears to be waste," Yuugi said sagely as he began to pick at the paper. "Like a phoenix out of its own ashes."

"Bull. Shit."

"Aww…just give me your sketchbook."

"Hell, no."

Yuugi took it anyway, and proudly placed a piece of gum wrapper foil no more than ten square centimeters in area onto the middle of the cover. Then, using his fingernail, he scratched at the sheet until it was stuck fast onto the paper.

"Ta-da! Isn't it pretty? Isn't it?" Yuugi held up the book for Bakura to see. Bakura squinted as the silvery foil caught the light and temporarily blinded him.

The crabby man rolled his eyes. "You'd just better not leave any damn shavings for me to pick up," he grouched.

"Relax." Yuugi waved his hand dismissively. "You're looking at a professional here."

As he continued to cover the sketchbook with the wrappers Bakura began to leave out, Yuugi conversationally went on about how his grandfather had been asking for his help in the Kame Game Shop that the elderly Mutou owned.

"You know, if Kaiba-kun markets it big enough, I think that Duel Monsters can be a really big hit in game stores," Yuugi pondered aloud.

Bakura scoffed. "Who the hell in their right mind would play a game where the rules make no fucking sense?"

"Well, the rules have to be fine-tuned and stuff, sure…" Yuugi amended. "But still, if anyone were to do it, it'll definitely be Kaiba-kun."

Bakura grunted. "Yeah, you go challenge him to a game when that happens, would you?"

Yuugi puffed his chest out importantly. "As a matter of fact, I will!" he said indignantly. "I happen to think myself as very good at the game!"

"Uh-huh."

There was a short silence for a moment, and the only sounds audible were the peeling of gum wrappers and the clicking of computer mice, until Yuugi spoke up again: "So?"

"So what?"

"So what happened yesterday after you ran out? Gosh, Youtai-kun, if I don't mention it, you really just pretend it didn't happen or something!"

Bakura's face darkened. "None of your bui—"

"Hey! Don't you go saying it's none of my business—" Yuugi warned at the same moment.

"Well, now it's fucking none of _my _business, either!" Bakura bellowed. "Drop it!"

"What? What do you mean, it's none of your business? _You're_ the one who went AWOL on _me_ yesterday!"

"I said to _drop it_, Mutou—" Bakura seethed dangerously. "I don't feel like talking about it…_ever_."

"But we're pals! And friendship is stronger than Chuck Norris—"

"I don't fucking _care_!" Bakura screamed. "Just _shut up_!" He knocked his mug of pencils over the desk so that they made a satisfying rattling sound when they hit the floor. "_Shut. Up_!"

Yuugi jumped back a bit at the violent reaction. "Well, _you_ can just go straight to hell!" he said, tone hurt. He pushed the half-finished notebook back into Bakura's hands, and walked off in a huff.

Bakura groaned and dropped his forehead into his palms on his desk. "Shit…Can't you see I'm already _there_?" he snarled to himself.

It took a while to pacify Yuugi, which Bakura did by chewing the rest of the pack of gum he had bought and offering the miffed man the wrappers in apology. At some times, Bakura was somewhat glad Yuugi was so much like a child— it seemed to Bakura that children were the only humans he could get away with acting like he did.

When Bakura returned home that evening, he happened to see Ryou and Kyouko return as well, in a taxi, of all things. Bakura scowled as he saw the pair step out of the passenger seats of the vehicle the block over.

'Yeah, so, he broke his arm…' Bakura grumbled, 'It's his own damn fault for not using mass transit like the rest of us— He deserves to go broke... But not like he ever would, with rich folks paying him to teach their snobby little kids piano—'

Bakura paused for a moment when two realizations struck him. Kyouko might be fine taking a train or bus back home, but there was practically no way Ryou would be. Bakura tried to picture Ryou voluntarily situating himself among a crowded area like a train daily, and couldn't. Taxi cabs may give the man more breathing space, but the cost would certainly be a stifle if he rode one to drop off or pick up his daughter five times a week until he received full use of his arm again.

His arm was broken… so how would he work? Ryou was looking at almost two months of recovery time, according to what Marik had said. It was possible Satou Prep would keep his position open for him until he got back, but the idea of Ryou sitting around at home letting his stupid phobia control his life even more tightly was definitely disheartening.

Bakura stared as Ryou struggled to open his wallet to pay the cabbie as he tried to balance Kyouko's schoolbag over his good shoulder. And he stared some more at Kyouko's downcast expression as she watched her father struggle.

* * *

Bakura found it extraordinarily difficult to stand watching Kyouko sinking in her own gloom cloud over the next few days. It made it nearly impossible to think about much else— Work, Yuugi, sugar, Kyouko. Work, Yuugi, sugar, Kyouko, Ryou. Work, Yuugi, sugar, Kyouko, Ryou, sugar. Work— and the cycle went on.

Bakura told himself firmly that he was going to ignore Ryou from now on— he remembered how well that worked out last time—he managed to dupe Yuugi long enough to stalk Ryou out of a Burger World and into a public park barely no more than maybe seven hours into it.

But it was different this time. Presently, his pride was still sore from being yelled at for doing what he believed was the right thing. He felt sorry for Kyouko, and that feeling seemed to swell a bit more every day, but the man had no idea how to make things right with the family again, and thinking about it forced a wave of nausea and shame through the man every time.

It made the man guilty— but no longer surprisingly so.

One day, by chance, Bakura came across the small white-haired clan in the lobby after another head-ache filled day at work. There were quite a number of people there as well, and it didn't take too long to figure out what the hold-up was:

"One little hiccup and you all come at me like attack dogs!" Old Man Tachibana screamed over the disgruntled mutters of his tenants as the mob formed an arc in front of the elevator. "It'll take half an hour more to finish, damn it!" He growled when he saw Bakura roll his eyes. "And _you_, Youtai, why don't you go take the stairs— wasn't this scenario the reason why you moved down a flight, anyhow?"

Bakura turned a violent shade of violet at the accusation and was just about to open his mouth to make a sharp, witty comeback when one, he couldn't think of anything to say— and besides, the moment to make one had passed— and two, he saw Ryou and Kyouko. As always when he saw the snowy-haired duo now, his heart lurched in a distinctly uncomfortable way.

Ryou was standing in front of the mail boxes, an image that Bakura had a feeling he would forever have imprinted in his mind. The pale man was sorting through the post with a grim expression on his face. Bakura scowled silently at him.

The younger of the Bakura family was sitting on one of the benches resting against the wall adjacent to the elevator, swinging her legs back and forth. She was careful not to kick the small pile of groceries placed almost protectively in front of her. Her head was bowed, but Bakura knew the girl well enough by now to pick up on her body language.

Ignoring Ryou was one thing— the bastard deserved it— but Bakura supposed he was still safe talking to Kyouko. He hesitantly walked up to where she sat, and stood there silently for a moment, waiting for the child to acknowledge his presence. Kyouko's eyes didn't budge from the floor. Bakura cleared his throat expectantly, and finally, her eyes wandered up.

"Oh, hi, ji-chan," she greeted glumly. She looked back down right afterwards, and her legs continued to swing.

"Hey, hey, hey." Bakura prodded a swinging shin with a toe. "What's with that face?"

"Hm?" Kyouko looked up at him, and then to Ryou, the latter who stayed with his back turned to the conversing pair, still shuffling through his mail with one arm. "…Can I tell you something, ji-chan?"

"…Whatever."

"Daddy's been really sad lately."

"…Why do you think that?"

Kyouko shrugged, eyes downcast. "I just do," she replied stubbornly. She turned to face Bakura, who now sat by her side. "Can I ask you something, too, ji-chan?"

Bakura grunted an affirmative as he made himself comfortable by resting his head against the wall behind them.

"Daddy said that you're busy now and that's why you haven't come over anymore," Kyouko said, tugging at the sleeve closest to her. "How much longer will you be busy?"

Bakura sighed mentally. Kids at this age never even thought about questioning the validity of their parents' words. Might as well spin the story along… not like he had a better alternative now. "…Don't know yet." Taking out a new box of gum absentmindedly, he opened a piece and dropped the gum into his mouth, "Want any?" he offered, waving the box with a twitch of his wrist.

Kyouko shook her head. "No."

Bakura sighed out loud this time. "Fine." His eyes kept themselves warily on Ryou as he chewed silently. The latter was still too preoccupied with his stupid mail to see Bakura there with his apparently 'fragile' antique doll of a daughter.

Crimson orbs wandered to the ball of foil he had been tossing back and forth between his hands, and as he did so, he thought of Yuugi.

Here goes nothing.

"Hey, kid. Give me one of your school books for a moment, would you?"

"…Okay." Kyouko reached into her book bag sitting on her other side and dug up a notebook, which she handed to Bakura. "What are you going to do with it, ji-chan?" she asked, slight interest creeping into her tone.

Bakura grunted. "Wait for it…" he muttered in a somewhat commanding tone. "Shit, shouldn't have crumpled it up…" he muttered to himself. Feeling momentarily embarrassed, he smoothed out the foil wrapper and began to pick at it.

"Ooh! What are you doing?" Kyouko asked, shaking Bakura's arm excitedly.

Bakura tossed Kyouko's notebook back to its owner with a sliver of gum wrapper foil stuck onto the side of the cover. The white-haired girl snatched it and brought it up to her face for closer inspection. "It's so pretty!" she squealed. She pushed it back into Bakura's hands. "Do it again!"

The moment of embarrassment passed.

"Sure." Bakura felt a bit better inwardly, pleased that he was able to, to an extent, comfort a forlorn little girl. After several more minutes of covering the book with the foil, the man unwrapped a piece for Kyouko to try.

"Ehh, ji-chan, I can't do it!" Kyouko complained. "Do it for me?" she asked in a playful, pleading tone.

Bakura rolled his eyes but obediently took the wrapper back. 'I'm a sucker for children,' he thought to himself.

"Alright," Tachibana suddenly called out into the lobby. "Elevator's ready to go!"

"Get ready, Kyouko-chan—" A shadow appeared before the two, and Bakura looked up to see Ryou, cheerless as ever, standing in front of them. The two men locked eyes for a moment; Bakura scowled as Ryou said nothing but gather his groceries around Kyouko's feet with his sole good arm.

"Look, Daddy! Ji-chan made this for me!" Kyouko cried out, brandishing the notebook like a weapon for her father to see. "I put some of the shiny stuff on it, too!" She pointed to the flaking, miniscule pieces at the side. "It's made from gum wrapper, Daddy! Isn't that really cool?"

Ryou smiled, although a bit forcefully, at her. "Hold onto Daddy's mail for a moment, Kyouko-chan. I need to pick up the bags."

"Okay!" Kyouko balanced her notebook and a large stack of mail in her arms as she got up. Bakura followed her action and received an unintelligible expression from Ryou.

Bakura watched as Ryou experimented for the best way to hold onto all his belongings with one arm. He almost thought about offering to help the man until Ryou finally managed to do it and turned away from him to face the elevator. Kyouko quickly followed.

As expected, Ryou didn't bother forcing himself into an elevator where there would be several other people breathing down his back. He and his daughter waited for the crowd to thin out, and as they did so, Bakura watched silently from his spot next to them.

From his angle, Bakura could very easily see the scratches that ran across Ryou's right cheek. They were shallow cuts, probably from broken window fragments, but they still looked pretty awful.

'Luckily for that bastard,' Bakura observed. '…They aren't too deep. They'll go away soon enough…' He mentally slapped himself for caring.

Kyouko fidgeted with the mail clasped tightly under one arm and her notebook in the other as she tried to peel foil off the half-stripped wrapper herself. She had the look of utmost concentration on her face, and her tongue even stuck out to the side as she furiously picked at the paper. Ryou turned to her for a second, still with the same unreadable face, and watched as his child be fascinated by something as ridiculous as two sheets of paper stuck together. His expression changed, then, to something just as impossible to describe. Yet…

When the doors opened in the elevator at the lobby floor again, the three were the only people left in use of it. Bakura hesitated before stepping into the small space with the other two, but it was a short one.

Ryou suddenly moved to the side when Bakura stepped on, as though he was seriously contemplating whether to somehow grab his daughter without actually physically touching her, and leave. He stayed still, though, and Bakura let out a breath he didn't know he was holding.

The first few flights were ridden in silence, save the huffy, determined noises emitted from one little girl as she toyed with the piece of paper in her fingertips. Bakura's eyes continued to roam, and watched Ryou set down the groceries momentarily to feebly massage his left hand with the hand brought close to his chest by the cast.

Ryou picked them up again just before the elevator reached their stop, and winced, as if it was painful to do so. Kyouko made another dissatisfied noise, supposedly unsuccessful in her mission to peel off any more of the stuff as the three stepped out onto the sixth floor.

Bakura almost made it with giving Ryou the silent treatment as the two simultaneously unlocked their front doors—he was going to, for once, be successful with an emotionally-charged plan— until one of the bags slipped right out of Ryou's grasp, landing on its side and spilling most of its contents on the cement floor.

Kyouko yelped and immediately dove after a rolling canned good as Ryou made a very frustrated expression and set down his other bags to pick up the loosened food. Bakura automatically reached down to help and picked up some of the fallen vegetables.

" You ought to get one of those grocery luggage bags—you know, the kind with the wheels so you don't have to carry the groceries by hand—" Bakura blurted out before he realized what he was doing.

He froze. Once again, he has self-sabotaged an air-filled "promise" to himself. This time, bent over and fisting Ryou's carrot.

Lovely.

* * *

Time passed, but not Bakura's guilt. Now that the passive-aggressive phase had rammed itself to an unsightly death into a wall, Bakura started having the very confusing arguments with himself again.

'You're an awful person for hanging the guy out to dry," his Yuugi-like conscience told him as the man got ready to sleep one night. Once again, Yuugi's Voice of Reason was back, but new and improved. There was even a disembodied, floating imaginary head of his coworker now as well. 'How could you do that?' the voice scolded disapprovingly.

"Do what? It serves him right," Bakura grumbled irritably back. "I'm not doing jack until that ungrateful bastard apologizes… Not like I'd help him again even if he did," he added hastily as an afterthought as he rolled out his futon.

'A little girl is suffering!' the high-pitched Yuugi-voice cried. 'You're so selfish.'

"That's not being selfish!" Bakura snapped. He thumped himself across the chest. "This is a matter of my fucking _pride_!"

'Pride?" the conscience repeated incredulously. 'You're the one who was _this_ close—' Yuugi-voice couldn't offer a physical representation— 'to baw—'

"_Don't_! _Say it_!" Bakura suddenly snarled, quite aware that he was trying to interrupt himself.

'Bawling like a _baby_!' the conscience finished loudly in his head. 'Whoever heard of a grown man about to burst out in tears like that? Are you still a kid?'

The voice was starting to sound less like Yuugi and more like Bakura's regular self.

Bakura did not like this new development.

"It wasn't _my_ fault! And _he_ made it sound like it was!" Bakura protested in a childish whine as he rolled to the side in his covers.

'He was distraught! He walked away from an accident not knowing where his own kid was! How would _you_ feel?'

"Fine! If Ryou apologizes for that— and don't you dare try to say that what he said wasn't completely fucking uncalled for, I'll go back to him."

'If _Ryou_ apologizes? You're not the one with the completely pure motives here either! What the hell _is_ your motive?'

He wished the Yuugi-conscience was back. Being wheedled was better than being demanded explanations he still couldn't find. "Alright, alright! You win!" Bakura gave up. "What the hell should I do, then?"

'Be the scape-goat— take the fall.'

"Fuck, _no_! I didn't do anything wrong!"

'You're doing this for an innocent child!' the voice snapped. "Not like your whole plan with ignoring-the-man worked— not like it_ ever _worked! Face it, you can't walk away voluntarily.'

"_He_'s the one who said he didn't want my help—"

'Look here. You and I both know you're going back there… Admit it, you're willing to go back because you know Ryou isn't as bad a person as you want to picture him to be.'

* * *

Getting ready to man up and swallow the blame was especially difficult at work the next day. The head honcho had called for his biweekly staff meeting, and from the look of his face, Kaiba Seto looked ready to wring someone's neck. As workers piled into the meeting room, Bakura tried hard to think of a possible way to break the filmy layer of awkward feeling between he and the other man, and found it quite the impossible task.

Meanwhile, Kaiba was screaming about something called Dungeon Dice Monsters, a new game that suddenly sprang up out of nowhere. According to Kaiba, it might as well have been the carbon copy of his own brainchild.

Bakura didn't see the resemblance. Dungeon Dice Monsters used _dice_. He didn't say it out loud, though— he still had objectives in life he needed to cover— most importantly, patching things up with Ryou—

"I want this Otogi Ryuji bastard _found_!' Kaiba seethed, banging his fists on the mahogany finish at the head of the table. "When he _eat_s, when he _sleeps_— _everything_. If he _sneezes_, I want to know about it—"

After the meeting, Bakura turned his cell phone on, and raised his eyebrows at the missed-call icon flashing on the screen. It was timed to just under ten minutes ago— back when he was still watching Kaiba trying to self-induce a heart attack.

Yuugi was immediately onto him like a shark to a bleeding piece of meat. "Hey! Who could that be?" He grinned evilly. "A _girlfriend_, maybe?"

"_What_?" Bakura snapped, pressing a few buttons to find the number with which he was dialed from. "Where the hell did you get that from?"

"Well, everyone I know that you know who would call you would probably know that Kaiba-kun hates it when people's cells' ring at his meetings. So the only person who I wouldn't know that you would know who would call you wouldn't know— meaning it _must_ be a girlfriend!" Yuugi explained proudly.

"…_What_? You know what— just shut up." Bakura examined the number. "Don't recognize it," he declared flatly, and snapped the phone shut.

"You fibber!" Yuugi cried out accusingly. "I dare you to call back in front of me."

"Why? It's probably one of those telemarketers."

"Then you shouldn't be scared," Yuugi said slyly.

"…Do you really think I count _that _as a threat?"

"Do it! Do it _now_!" Yuugi boomed. "I triple-stitch double-_dare_ you to call back!"

"Oh, my fucking _god_!" Bakura shouted exasperatedly. "Fine!"

He dialed the number and waited impatiently for someone on the other line to pick up as Yuugi pressed his cheek against the other side of the phone. It rang once, and then a male voice that Bakura recognized too well picked up: "Hello."

Bakura pushed Yuugi away, who landed on the floor with a yelp. "_You _called me ten minutes ago?"

"Yes, I did. I would like to talk to you about—"

The line disconnected when Bakura dropped his phone in surprise. He let out an aggravated scream, for he had just hung up on Bakura Ryou.

Any thoughts to "man up" and take any blame for anything were temporarily forgotten as Bakura tried to forgive himself for hanging up on the man. Unable to return any phone call due to Kaiba's sudden sweep of each floor to make sure each and every one of his employees were fighting this so-called war of Duel Monsters versus Dungeon Dice Monsters, Bakura had to wait a painful hour and a half before Kaiba finally left to canvass another level.

"Godspeed," Yuugi whispered out loud as Kaiba stomped into his private, one-person elevator.

Bakura immediately lunged for his phone and had a brief moment of panic when the buttons on his phone became stuck, rendering him unable to get to his past-calls screen. Thankfully, he was finally able to make the call in a locked stall of the men's bathroom, where he was ninety-five percent sure Yuugi wasn't able to follow.

A dull "hello" picked up after a few more seconds of silent agony.

"Hey— hello? It's me— Look, sorry about the last call. I—uh—accidentally dropped my phone and I couldn't call back 'til now—"

"…That's alright." The voice was surprisingly calm.

"Uh, you said you had something to say to me?"

Ryou paused on his end of the line. "Yes. I would like to apologize about that day in which I said some… very cruel things to you."

"..._Seriously_?" That _bastard_— didn't he have the guts to apologize face-to-face?

"Excuse me?" Ryou suddenly snapped sharply.

"Shit— You _heard_ that? — I mean— uh— nothing."

There was a short silence. Finally, Ryou continued. "I have been unfair to you, Youtai Bakura. Though I believe I did what any father in the situation would have done… panic, as much as I dislike to admit it, I should acknowledge that you did what made the most sense to you in the moment of chaos."

Only Ryou could still make an apology sound insulting.

"…And I'm grateful for that."

Bakura's jaw dropped open.

"Are you still on the line?" Ryou's angry tone pushed Bakura back into the atmosphere. He choked back a quick "yeah".

"Look… as gratitude, I would appreciate for you to perhaps come have a short lunch with Kyouko and me tomorrow afternoon."

"Tomorrow?"

"Yes. Monday," Ryou enunciated slowly, in a very Ryou-like, condescending manner.

"No, I can't do that— I mean, I would sure as hell would like to go— uh, I mean, sure, that's a thought— _What I'm saying _is that I can't leave for lunch when my boss is in the building—" Bakura could faintly recognize the signs of rambling in his speech. "How about Saturday? I'm off then—"

"No. I'm busy Saturday." Ryou shot down the suggestion flatly.

"…Oh."

"Would you agree to… dinner plans?"

"At your place?" Bakura questioned incredulously.

"No." Well, that was blunt. "There is a seafood restaurant nearby. The one a few blocks east of the apartment building."

"The one across the park? Yeah, yeah, sure. I can do that."

"Good. We'll see you there at seven thirty tomorrow night." Ryou hung up without so much as a farewell.

Bakura cleared his throat and unlocked the door of the stall to see Yuugi standing innocently by the sinks. "What the hell, Mutou? You were standing there all that time?"

"No," Yuugi said in a faux hurt tone, drawing out his denial of any such thing. "I was listening in front of the stall for a while, but then I moved to the sinks 'cause I thought that might be intruding on your personal bubble—" Yuugi exaggeratedly mimed a bubble in the air. "And we all know how _important_ that is to you."

"…Yeah, like you actually have any concept of personal space," Bakura scoffed. He paused for a moment in hesitation, and then said somewhat proudly, "I have dinner plans tomorrow night."

Yuugi's eyes widened.

"It's not what you think!" Bakura snapped. "It's with a man."

Yuugi's mouth opened wide.

"And his kid!"

Yuugi took a deep inhale.

"Mutou, I will _smash_ your face into this sink if you do so much as _blink_!"

* * *

When Bakura finally arrived at the restaurant, he took a quick breath before pushing open the front glass door. A waiter walked to his side. "Welcome, sir. How many seats?"

Bakura looked down at his watch. It was seven-thirty sharp. "Uh, three pe—"

"Ji-chan!" Kyouko bounded up to him in a light blue dress, a bit fancy when considering it was just a normal family diner. "You came!"

"Hey, kid. Nice dress."

Kyouko giggled and patted her dress. "Thank you! Daddy took me dress shopping today and gave it to me! And look!" She held out a multi-colored, foil-wrapped notebook. "I finished it!… Well, Daddy helped, but only a little bit." She leaned in and whispered in his ear in a near-conspiratorially way. "I had to teach Daddy how to do it," she said importantly.

Bakura cracked a sneer and straightened. "Where _is_ your dad?"

She pointed to a table tucked away in the back. "Daddy's sitting over there!"

As the pair walked, Bakura decided to test the waters a bit: "So your dad's happier again?"

"I think so!"

Bakura frowned in deep thought. It was either that Ryou was indeed "happy" again… or Ryou was simply doing a better job of hiding his true feelings. Bakura highly suspected the latter was more plausible.

The seated man didn't even look up as Bakura sat down across from him next to Kyouko, who had scampered into her seat first. Ryou's complete, undivided attention was given to the menu he held in a gloved hand.

"Daddy said that you can order whatever you want, ji-chan!" Kyouko offered excitedly as she gave him another copy. Bakura grunted a reply as he took it.

'I can pay for my own damn food,' Bakura thought to himself, before he realized that this was actually a good sign on Ryou's part, as indirect as it was.

As Bakura read his own menu silently, there was the nagging, uncomforting sensation of déjà vu.

Bakura couldn't really remember what he ordered as he reflected upon the night later, just that Kyouko echoed whatever Ryou finally muttered out to the waiter. There was one hell of an awkward silence until the food arrived. The strain went unnoticed by Kyouko, who kept the dinner conversation going solo by regurgitating all the happenings in nursery school recently.

The two adults simply listened and ate.

After the meal, Kyouko's attention was diverted to the live fish swimming in tanks at the front of the restaurant. "Could I go see the fishies, Daddy?" Kyouko begged. Bakura's eyes flitted from the daughter to the father. Ryou looked up from the check which he passed to the waiter with his bill to his child, to the fish tanks, and then back to his child again.

"…Alright."

"Yay!" Kyouko was gone in an instant.

Bakura now remembered why this situation looked so familiar. The only difference was that they weren't in an ice cream shop, Bakura had just finished eating one of the most painful meals ever, and that he wasn't about to dig himself into a hole that he will later be pitch-forked in the ass for.

"I'm sorta surprised you let her go by herself," Bakura heard himself blurt out. He caught himself too late. "Not like I'm saying that doing that's not a good thing or anything—"

Ryou's eyes met his for the first time that night. "…I agree I can be overprotective of Kyouko-chan sometimes. "She is my only child, and she would probably remain so." Ryou took a silent inhale, and then let it exit his mouth just as quietly. "As for letting her go by herself, that is because I have something to say to you."

Bakura remained glued to his seat as Ryou cleared his throat. "I shall be saying something… _personal_ directly." Bakura blinked. "My daughter became quite distraught after my accident… because of me, I believe," Ryou declared.

Bakura kept silent, somewhat pleased that Ryou was perceptive enough to have picked up on that, as late as it was. Ryou paused.

"You're probably wondering why I'm telling you this, Youtai Bakura."

"…A little bit, yeah."

Ryou cleared his throat again. "I wish for you to reconsider your decision to quit your home visits… for Kyouko," he added slowly.

There was a part of Bakura, that conscience-plagued part, that part that now used Bakura's voice instead of Yuugi's, that nearly rejoiced at the offer, but Bakura couldn't stop himself from putting up his guard. He was still miffed at having been lectured quite that unjustly and harshly, and it was something he never wanted to experience again.

"Why? _You're_ the one who said it wasn't working out," Bakura snapped, unable to keep the sneer out of his tone. "What changed?"

"…I have been upset at myself for many reasons, the most important pertaining to Kyouko-chan," Ryou said quietly. "These past few days have been a wake-up call for me. I don't know how long of a time I have with my child left— that finally came into surface in my mind." He let out a dry laugh. "I was lucky this time— I got away with a broken arm and a few scratches. The worst damage was done to my car, and that I'm on temporary leave at work."

So Bakura's conscience-riddled side was right.

"You were right about some of your points, Youtai Bakura," Ryou admitted. "Kyouko-chan's well-being is the most important… And I have been unfair to her. I need to change things for the better."

Bakura was stunned. This was Christmas-come-early right here; Ryou was confessing that he was wrong for once. Bakura, never in his right mind, actually thought Ryou would do this. There should be noted emphasis on the phrase "in his right mind".

Perhaps Bakura should have thought a bit more before answering… but then, the man wasn't known for thinking too long and hard about any decision.

"…Fine. I mean, yeah. Yeah, I'll do it." Bakura's affirmations became stronger with each short sentence he mended together to make his response.

Ryou's dark eyebrows rose in surprise, as if Bakura's agreeing one second after he popped the question was the last thing he expected. "You're serious."

Bakura felt himself flush. "Yeah."

Ryou said nothing for a moment, and then he cleared his throat for a third time that night. "I apologize for comparing you to… that person I said you reminded me of… You've certainly proven to be… the opposite by holding to your promise to quit smoking. I have come to realize that rudely late of me." Ryou paused. "But also by agreeing to come over again."

The words "to help" went unsaid.

And then Ryou said something particularly interesting. "You… are a different kind of person, Youtai Bakura. And that is why I appreciate your coming over and rather not anybody else's."

Bakura's skin had the tendency to get blotchy when he was embarrassed. He hoped that that wasn't the case now as he flushed at the odd compliment.

"…May I ask why you agreed as you did?" Ryou asked. Bakura knew what he meant; Ryou wanted to know why the man said "yes" so quickly.

Bakura, too, wished he, himself, knew.

"You're…" Bakura strained to think of the right answer. "You're a different kind of person, too."

Ryou blinked, but then nodded slowly. The man smoothly got out of his seat. Bakura felt a bit self-conscious for a moment, but then followed, albeit in a much less fluid fashion. Unsure as to what to do next, Bakura simply traced Ryou's footsteps as the man walked almost hesitantly over to his daughter.

Bakura watched as Ryou kept opening his mouth and trying to get his daughter's attention away from the brightly lit tanks, and he watched as Ryou struggled to pull the words out that he knew would make his child nothing less of happy.

So Bakura crouched down next to her instead and told her. The resulting smile Kyouko had for them was unforgettable.

* * *

Kyouko was more than thrilled for Youtai Bakura to return to the Bakura residence, and embraced the man without a skip in the beat. Bakura, himself, came to grudgingly accept that it was quite a nice feeling to be wanted around… and finally welcomed.

The first visit, for the continuation of Bakura-visits-Bakura household were now once again deemed acceptable, happened rather unexpectedly. Bakura had no intention of staying more than a minute because no actual date and time had been set up for an official first meeting, and his only purpose at his neighbor's apartment that night was simply to return a piece of mail that had accidentally wound up in Bakura's mailbox instead.

It was a simple letter from the city bank outlining some new procedures in management, yet the expression on Ryou's face when Bakura casually mentioned that he came by to drop off some mixed up mail definitely suggested something was wrong.

Yet Bakura suppressed the ravenous urge to swoop into the matter; he had quickly deduced that the new issue probably didn't have to do with Kyouko before his mind did a forced shut-down for a reason he couldn't figure out at the time.

Kyouko had popped out of the bathroom right afterwards, and surprisingly, it took minimal pleading to persuade Ryou to let Bakura stay for a home-made dinner. It was nearly dinner-time for the pair, and Bakura supposed it would have looked painfully backward to a new start if Ryou didn't at least attempt…

But Bakura panicked. All this time, he had really done nothing but research the very basics of haphephobia— what it was, and he was now extremely ashamed to admit it, how to provoke a person with the phobia. His previous "work" with Ryou centered on hanging around his place until he got kicked out, only to get his foot back in the front door the next evening.

He would never forgive himself if he messed up this time.

As Ryou prepared the meal alone, Bakura watched from the living area space. Kyouko was too preoccupied with the task of dictating what doodles for Bakura to make to notice her father being stared down.

Ryou was apparently quite skilled at cooking, judging by how naturally the man moved in the kitchen with just one good arm. Bakura, himself, was quite the cook himself; he could now make perfect instant noodles due to his plentiful experiences with the food. But getting back on track. Bakura mentally took note that if Ryou were to put his mind to it, there actually shouldn't be anything hindering him from living a normal life… One arm— he used just one arm to wash and cut everything he needed to make a dinner for three.

He did all of this because of Kyouko—all for Kyouko. It wouldn't have been hard for Ryou to ask Kyouko to help him make dinner, even if her work consisted of opening the refrigerator and taking out a carton of eggs; Ryou simply did not want to trouble his daughter and give her the impression that his body was in any way compromised. So he took care of the complete dinner instead.

But for once, the man finally understood that there were just some things that one person couldn't do by himself or herself.

"Ji-chan! Ji-chan! This time, draw a pony! Make the pony a girl— Wait… no! Make it a boy— No, draw _two_ ponies!"

After Ryou slowly set down his apron, which he had left untied during his cooking, Bakura noticed the man's careful attempt to settle in his seat and watch his daughter giggle uncontrollably at Bakura's drawings. Kyouko grabbed one of the drawings and ran over to her father, flailing the sheet in the air.

"Look, Daddy! Ji-chan drew it and said I could keep it! It's a princess and a prince and their castle and their ponies!"

To Bakura's surprise, Ryou delicately plucked the drawing out of his daughter's hands and actually studied it. "It's nice," he said slowly.

"Right? Ji-chan's so awesome, Daddy!"

"…Yes. Yes, he is." Ryou looked up from the paper to face a suddenly beet-purple faced man and took a deep inhale. "You took art classes," he said rather bluntly.

Bakura would have loved to give Ryou credit for attempting to be social, but it was pretty hard to do that when his pride swelled up indignantly— like it seriously had a body of its own— at the almost insulting comment.

"Yeah, I took some," Bakura said civilly. Then he added, "I've been drawing since I was a kid. You know, ten thousand hours on anything and you get to be a pro."

Ryou furrowed his eyebrows. "I suppose I can relate to that," he muttered, more to himself than to Bakura. Kyouko spoke up.

"It's almost dinner time, Daddy. Do I have to take a bath now?"

"Hm? Oh…" Ryou paused for a moment. "You may take it after dinner if you wish, Kyouko-chan."

"Really? Yay!" Kyouko did a little twirl on the spot.

Bakura had a hard time figuring out why Ryou made such a stray from his normal routine for Kyouko, until a past screaming match rang a bell for him. Wasn't he the one who accused Ryou of purposely making Kyouko take baths as he finished cooking dinner to avoid communication with her?

"I'm getting a new car soon," Ryou said suddenly.

The man couldn't seem to stop surprising Bakura tonight, it seemed. First allowing him to stay in the first place, then breaking up old schedules, and now voluntarily having small talk with him?

"What color, Daddy?" Kyouko asked excitedly.

"…I haven't decided yet, Kyouko-chan."

"Ooh! Ooh! Can I pick, then?"

Bakura snorted at the only thing Kyouko seemed to be interested in when it came to the term "new car" as Ryou gave his daughter a faint smile.

"Oh! What color should I choose, Daddy?"

Ryou smiled again with a bit more assurance. "You can decide."

"Oh, I know! I'll bring out my crayon box!" She hopped off the sofa. "Wait for me, Daddy!" she cried as she ran to the bedroom.

At the silence of only two adults left in the room, Bakura asked a question that had been subconsciously bothering him awfully for a while now. "…Hey, Ryou." Ryou looked up from the drawing still in his hands. "Let me ask you something?" Ryou nodded once very slowly, and lightly placed the paper on the coffee table before him. "Why'd you get such a crappy car in the first place?" Bakura sat up taller. "Not like I know a hell of a lot about cars but… it would've been a lot safer if you, I don't know, got a better one in the first place—? Yours wasn't in such great shape, really—"

Bakura had a feeling he should have stopped there. He didn't listen to that feeling.

"And this place." Bakura opened his arms to motion to the apartment they were in. "Shouldn't you have…been able to get something better? You can afford it and all—"

There was complete silence in the room.

"I have a growing child to take care of," Ryou finally answered in a clipped, nearly icy tone.

He was very obviously evading the question at hand. Bakura had the sneaking suspicion that it had to do with this new set of mystery mail than the man was currently on the look out for.

Here they go again.

Bakura still couldn't figure out exactly what was it that prevented him for pressing for a more detailed explanation, but he refused to admit that it was because there was a growing part of his mind that wished Ryou would someday tell him, himself.

* * *

**Author's Note: **Why does Ryou finally get around to accepting "help"? That is a pivotal point in this story— In the original draft all those months ago, no such thing as Chapter 11 happened. The absence of this chapter was what was making this story on the unrealistic side— and hell, it took a long time to fill in _that_ gaping hole.

The "chapterly" reference in this chapter to **YGOTAS** stemmed from the whole Dungeon Dice Monsters scene. The charming **DandyDandelion **came up with the "friendship is stronger than Chuck Norris" reference. There is a weak nod to Yuugi's extreme Duel Monsters "skillz".

This chapter was named so due to Yuugi's rare Pearl-of-Wisdom speech. You can actually try the gum wrapper peeling yourself! All you need is a wrapper with the foil on it. It's advised not to crumple up the paper because that weakens the foil and makes it harder to peel off satisfactory pieces. Keep rubbing until it starts coming off, use your fingernails, and let 'er rip!

There was a very slight sexual innuendo in this chapter. I will seriously applaud anyone who finds it.


	11. Excuse

"_I have a growing child to take care of_."

Bakura had to admit it. It got a little chillier in the room.

"Damn it!" he cursed to himself. "I pissed him off again!" He stole a look over to Ryou, who was now sitting uncomfortably in his extra-cushioned seat.

On second glance, Ryou didn't look as pissed off as he did unnerved, as if Bakura's blunder has set off some uncontrollable need to pick at his gloves, which the man now did ceaselessly. There was apprehension painted all over Ryou's face, and for that reason, Bakura was starting to get rather uneasy as well.

Bakura could not help but feel the slightest bit disappointed at Ryou; no matter how hard the man could try with becoming more social with Bakura, how the hell would any of that help if the man were to retreat back in his hole over questions he didn't even bother to confront?

And even better for Bakura, he had to have been the one to cause whatever gloom Ryou was sinking himself into now.

He seemed to be a magnet for this kind of thing.

Bakura got up. "Maybe I ought to go," he said, a little cautiously.

"You're leaving?" Ryou looked up from his thoughts.

For a moment, Ryou looked as if he was going to say something to that, with Bakura hoping it being along the lines of "wait", or maybe even "hold on". He had even gotten up, too and everything—

"Daddy! Ji-chan! I found my crayon box!" Kyouko burst suddenly from the bedroom, rattling a bright plastic container in the air. Her head turned from one standing adult to the other. "What are you two doing?"

Bakura looked over at Ryou's blanching face. The man had obviously just lost all of his courage. "I'm gonna have to take a rain check, kid—" He froze at Kyouko's suddenly darkening expression.

Oh, crap.

"Why?" Kyouko demanded, hands on her hips with a very Ryou-like scowl on her face.

This was perhaps the first time Bakura could confidently say the two had to have been biologically related.

"Uh…"

He could hardly say that it was because Ryou's big, friendly, open hospitality had sometime— and Bakura knew _exactly_ when— burned to something near a brewing mess of bitter guilt.

"I just realized I had something really important to do for work," he lied. "Really important," he repeated, when Kyouko's scowl deepened. "But I guarantee I'll be back tomorrow."

"Really?" Kyouko asked dubiously. "You promise you'll come back? It has to be tomorrow."

"…Yeah."

Ryou looked over at him with an odd expression, and if Bakura had known any better, he would have realized that it was gratitude.

'You are such an _asshole_!' the entity now just permanently dubbed 'The Voice' screeched as Bakura slunk back into his own apartment. 'Why the hell did you have to go and ask him those questions for? Everything was going perfectly well until you had to open your big fat mouth and sour the guy's mood.'

Bakura scratched his messy hair furiously. "Shut up! I already feel bad enough about it as is!"

'Some nerve _you _had being so fucking blunt about the man's business!'

It seemed as though Yuugi-voice would never come back.

'You're there to help the guy get a better relationship with his kid, not write his biography—'

"Damn it, you—you—whatever the hell you are!" Bakura yelled out loud. "I'll go fix it tomorrow!"

'You'd _better _go fix it!'

* * *

Something smelled kind of fishy, and it wasn't the suspicious package that lay abandoned a few seats away from Bakura as the man rode his train home the next evening.

Bakura peeked into the plastic bag he currently had resting between his feet and pursed his lips sourly. He stuffed another potato chip in his mouth and tried to look a bit more intimidating to his fellow train customers as they passed where he was sitting.

Perhaps his expression was the reason why strangers kept giving him side looks and muttering warnings to their neighbors, rather than the two innocent bags printed 'Thank you for shopping with Kano Supermarket' sitting between his feet.

The train rolled into his station platform smoothly, and Bakura quickly hauled his bags up and out.

He briskly made his way up to the seventh floor and headed straight to apartment number Seven-Nineteen. Subconsciously standing a bit straighter and puffing out his chest a bit, he rang his neighbor's doorbell and waited.

Ryou opened the door after a moment, said nothing to Bakura but did look at the plastic bags he carried, and stepped back to motion wordlessly for the man to enter.

"Ji-chan!" Kyouko turned her head away from the blaring, colorful screen of the television to greet Bakura. "You're here today!" She paused, and looked at him carefully. "Did you finish all your work before coming?"

Bakura faked a laugh. "Of course I did," he said loudly. "I bought… uh… some food this time around," Bakura continued lamely to Ryou, lifting the bags to eye level as he shuffled into the living area. "Not because I think you can't buy it yourself or anything— it just seems…right to buy some things if I come visit—"

It was actually more like a peace-offering.

"That's kind of you to do so," Ryou muttered flatly. "I hope you didn't trouble yourself."

"Nah… It's just everyday stuff…"

In truth, today's trip had been the first time he had ever ventured to the fish market and fresh vegetables sides of the local supermarket. He had met his fair share of unsavory characters for the day there, including a rather sea-obsessed Tsunami Mako, whom Bakura had the misfortune of having as his the-man-behind-the-counter.

Kyouko lunged for him, forgetting anything pertaining to Bakura's flaky visit schedule . "Lemmee see!" She grabbed at the bags. "Fish! You brought fish! Why did you bring fish? What kind of fish is it?"

"…Uh…" Bakura was beginning to feel a bit like an idiot with all his pauses. "Some… uh…" He cheated a bit and peered into his bags again, but found that he couldn't remember exactly what were the names of the fish he had bought.

Ryou carefully took the bag away from his daughter. "Salmon and tuna."

"…Yeah."

Ryou seemed to struggle to exhale smoothly for a moment. "Thank you."

Bakura grinned the first time that day, feeling very much relieved. The guilt of having single-handedly screwing up last night had now very neatly pocketed itself away.

"You bought a lot of food," Ryou remarked after Kyouko went back to watching her cartoons, opening up the other bag.

Bakura, now much more relaxed now that he and Ryou were back to where their relationship stood previously—which was technically still nowhere at all—shrugged in a carefree manner. "I didn't know what your kid liked to eat, so I got a bit of everything."

"Hm," Ryou muttered unintelligibly. "Kyouko-chan eats all vegetables, regardless of what she likes."

"…Oh." Bakura leaned back against the counter, not really sure as to what else to say as Ryou emptied both bags.

He watched as Ryou delicately sorted the groceries. "It's a little too much for one meal. Even for three people."

"…Then you could save the rest… For next time I come over or something."

He hoped so, at any rate.

"…I suppose," Ryou muttered back, as if in deep thought. "Red," he suddenly blurted.

"…What?"

"Red," Ryou repeated impatiently. "Kyouko-chan chose red. For the car color. She picked red."

Bakura had to cringe inwardly at the man's sad attempt at conversation. However, he certainly didn't outwardly express it.

A small step forward was better than any step back.

"…That's nice, Ryou."

* * *

Bakura left shortly after dinner, aware that he surely wouldn't want to outstay his invitation for fear of a sudden problem that he wouldn't be able to cover for as smoothly as the first night's.

But as days wore into weeks, he became a bit more daring. The more Ryou became accustomed to his presence long term, the better. And so it just about hit the two-week mark when Bakura felt that it seemed only natural to stay until Kyouko went to bed at nine.

Ryou had just sent his daughter off to sleep, and Bakura was packing up his pencils and paper. This was latest he's ever been over, and it would have been a pretty bad lie if Bakura said he wasn't the slightest bit interested in what Ryou did after his responsibilities for his sole family member were completed for the day.

To his surprise, Ryou simply went into the kitchenette and took out a carton of milk. Pouring a cup-sized amount into a small pot, he turned on the stove and stood there for a minute as he watched the heat warm the liquid. Afterwards, he slowly poured himself a glass, and sat down across from Bakura.

"You have trouble sleeping, Ryou?"

Ryou looked up at the sudden question. "It's more habit than anything else," he admitted quietly. "But I do have a hard time waking up, even with an alarm clock."

Bakura turned a pinkish shade, remembering the secret Kyouko told him not to tell Ryou concerning the time with the broken alarm clock and missing keys.

"How early do you wake up?" Bakura asked, genuinely interested as he sat up straighter.

"Five-thirty," Ryou answered matter-of-factly.

"Five—_five_-thirty?" Bakura spluttered with disbelief. "Why the hell would you need to get up that early? Nursery school doesn't start until eight something—and it only takes like twenty minutes to get there."

"I have to prepare breakfast and Kyouko-chan's lunch."

"But _still_! You can finish that in what—an hour max? Don't lie to me, Ryou; I've seen you in the kitchen. You don't need two hours to cook something up in there."

Ryou frowned at Bakura. "…I didn't say I spent the entire time cooking," he snapped. "I rest in the remaining time."

"Rest. As in do nothing," Bakura repeated flatly, trying to clarify. Ryou nodded very slowly in a rather condescending manner. "If you don't even do anything, why not just wake up later?"

"I used to use that time to practice piano. I don't anymore," Ryou replied, sipping the remainder of his glass.

"Why?"

Ryou gave him a very disgusted look.

"What? What'd I say wrong?"

Ryou snorted into his glass as he drained the rest of it, and made his way swiftly to the sink to rinse it.

'What just happened? Aw, fuck, I'm not going back to that freaky fish guy to make things up with Ryou again—' Bakura thought quickly. "Wait, Ryou, tell me what I said wrong…!" Bakura called out. "Whatever I said, I didn't mean it!"

"You're the one who threatened to have me thrown out of the building because I was disturbing your beauty sleep upstairs," Ryou said calmly while he put on dishwashing gloves and set the glass under the water. "Back when you lived right above me, and not directly next to me."

Bakura laughed nervously, the memory now freshly turned over in his mind. "You still remember that, Ryou?"

"Yes." Ryou returned the glass to the tray.

Bakura tried to chuckle lightly again, but the sounds came out like uneasy chokes instead.

Please. _Please_ switch the subject. Or else Bakura would have to make a quick getaway.

"Thank you for last night," Ryou suddenly said.

Well, that was unexpected.

Bakura latched onto his ticket away from the muddy, muddy past anyway. Bakura opened his mouth to steer the conversation permanently in this new direction, until—

Wait.

"What happened last night?"

Ryou might have been moving a little too fast with communication. Just a little bit.

"If you don't want to accept my thanks, that's absolutely fine by me, too," Ryou snapped cagily.

"No, I didn't say that," Bakura answered quickly. "You're welcome."

For whatever.

As it came pretty apparent Ryou wasn't going to continue speaking, Bakura said the first thing that came to his mind: "It's a lot of work raising a kid by yourself, isn't it?"

Ryou bristled. "What the _fuck_ are you implying?" he spat out.

Shit. This was even worse—

"I didn't mean anything bad by it—" Bakura tried to amend. "I was just saying… maybe, maybe I could drop off your kid at school. Just until your arm gets better. And since it's on the way to my work and everything…"

What hell on Earth made Bakura suggest something as far-fetched as that?

Right. Ryou's wrath. That certainly qualified as hell on Earth in Bakura's books.

"_Excuse _me?"

"You know!" Bakura shouted, hoping his blotchy skin wasn't returning. "Just for the next few weeks— so you don't have to spend so much money on taxis to get her around."

Ryou blinked from his place behind the counter, and then set down his rubber gloves. "Why? That's not in your job description," he said flatly. "…If you're doing all of this for some exterior motive, then no, thank you."

"What exterior motive?" Bakura echoed, rather insulted. "I'm really serious!"

Ryou paused. "…I know. I'm… sorry. That's a very nice favor," he finally muttered. "I'll mention it to Kyouko and ask if she'd mind."

Bakura grunted, and slung his bag over a shoulder after he zippered it up. "…Tell me when you make a decision."

"Of course."

Bakura glanced at Ryou before he walked out the door.

He couldn't understand exactly why Ryou appeared to be so conflicted with himself.

* * *

It turned out that Kyouko liked riding the subway with Bakura very much.

It also turned out that Bakura quite enjoyed the sensation of having a kid wave enthusiastically good-bye to him in front of a school building amidst a mob of screaming children.

There were a lot of new "sensations" that Bakura had his chance to enjoy; there was a sense of importance, for one, as he voluntarily began to walk down aisles that weren't labeled "snacks/candy". There was a sense of responsibility as well, as he accidentally-on-purpose whacked a teenage boy with his bag when the latter nearly plowed over Kyouko trying to get on the subway.

These were the ego-stroking experiences— the one that made him feel undeniably good about himself— a rare occurrence if there ever was any.

It was the completely moment-in-time happenings, like helping Ryou wash the dishes after dinner and receiving a curt nod in thanks, and sometimes—on good days, Bakura hypothesized— when Ryou would generously give out a small smile as well, that he couldn't quite completely classify as the same thing as buying some cauliflower or doing some little girl a bit of justice.

That kind of sensation, coupled with the smile—Bakura zeroed it down just to the smile— would stick in Bakura's head for hours. He finally reasoned that this was because Ryou rarely ever smiled and that since Bakura could be considered a fine artist, things of the aesthetically pleasing sort naturally appealed to him.

Of course, this wasn't to say that Ryou wasn't aesthetically pleasing normally, now that the man had more color in his face so he didn't look so much like the undertaker anymore.

Bakura tried not to think too hard about this one.

…Right.

* * *

'_Haphephobia—a rare specific phobia that involves the fear of touching or of being touched. It is an acute exaggeration of the normal tendencies to protect one's personal space, expressed as a fear of contamination or of the invasion, and extending even to people whom its sufferers know well_.'

Bakura's eyebrows furrowed, and he took another swig of his beer as he leaned back into his squealing sofa. Then, he wordlessly flipped the paper over to study his picture of Ryou on the other side.

"…I'll work on it," he said loudly to no one.

He leaned over and took out a second sheet of notes from his worn bag resting beside him on the adjacent armrest. The handwriting on this new piece of paper was much neater, much more carefully written out.

'_When the fear of touch and of being touched becomes so intense as to disrupt a person's ability to function, there are a number of different ways to treat haphephobia. These can include: A referral from the primary physician to a therapist who specializes in the treatment of phobias. Traditional "talk" therapy that will teach the person to recognize and control their phobia. Exposure Therapy. Hypnotherapy. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or Desensitization Therapy. Self-help techniques such as progressive muscle relaxation. Support groups with others coping with this specific phobia. Relaxation techniques such as deep breathing or visualization. In extreme cases of haphephobia, anti-anxiety medications can be prescribed_.'

Bakura prayed to any existing deity out there that Ryou did not have what was called this "extreme case".

The reason was because if that was so, Bakura would have absolutely no choice but to admit to Ryou his help ended there…

But even if he didn't go in that direction— in the worst case scenario, Bakura was already realizing problems:

Bakura noticed that he, himself, was uncomfortable with touching Ryou in a forward way.

Perhaps it was due to what happened last time in the elevator. Or maybe it was because he was still too shaken up with the idea of messing up the very odd relationship he had with Ryou that he had managed to salvage this past month.

If Ryou had any preconceptions of Bakura's thoughts on the matter, he certainly didn't say anything about it.

And so neither did Bakura.

* * *

Ryou seemed to be more anxious than usual one night. He continued to open his mouth as if to announce something, but he would simply snap it shut after a moment, and continue doing whatever he was doing at the moment, whether it was cooking or watching Kyouko play around.

Bakura gave a blind eye over to Ryou, careful to abide by the unspoken rule. The preparation of dinner and the dinner itself went by this way.

"Are you free tomorrow?"

That question came completely out of the blue, and Bakura had to look up from his sketches that he was making after the meal to make sure that he was indeed the person Ryou was addressing, and not the little girl clapping her hands giddily at the pictures next to him.

"Yeah, I get my day off tomorrow. Why?"

"I would really appreciate if you were to pick up some music sheets for me at my workplace for me," Ryou explained, eyes focused on his gloved hands, which were once again picking mindlessly at each other. "I have yet to finish a piece I was making, and I figured that since I now a little bit more spare time, I should use it to work on my composing."

"…Why don't you just go yourself?"

"I need you to watch after Kyouko-chan the entire day as well."

"Wait, _what_?" Bakura dropped his pencil with a clatter on the table.

"Really? Ji-chan's gonna be with me all day?"Kyouko spoke up.

"If it wasn't important, I wouldn't ask," Ryou said shortly, ignoring his daughter's question to answer Bakura. "I have an important errand to run— I really need you to do this."

Bakura frowned. He was really not up for chaperoning a little girl for a day. Especially when it was a day where his boss was required by Domino law to give scheduled breaks to his employees.

"Please."

"…Alright, fine." Bakura stretched his cramped legs. "I'll do it as a _favor_. I'm keeping that in mind."

Suspicion bubbled.

That bit about visiting Satou Prep was probably just a little show Ryou was creating so Bakura would feel more inclined to go…But if Ryou deemed Bakura good enough to watch over his kid for an entire day, he supposed that made it worth it.

They reached Satou Prep just before ten o'clock, mostly blamed on Ryou's insistence that they leave the apartment building that early. Kyouko was very excited to go visit her father's workplace, and told Bakura that it would be the first time she was there. Bakura couldn't relate to her excitement. If her father wasn't there, what the hell would make it that interesting?

The pair was immediately blocked by a gigantic man with shades and a pyramid sticking on top of his head.

"Hey, I recognize you!" Kemo yelled, pointing an accusing finger at the man that had just managed to get into the lobby of Satou Prep, accompanied with a small bespectacled child.

He had forgotten about this pain in the ass.

"What the hell?" Bakura sputtered out loud. "It's been like three months!"

"You look so suspicious— who _wouldn't _recognize you? Don't think that just because you bring a pipsqueak over here that you can make me forget your little trespassing shenanigan last time!"

A few well-dressed middle aged men and women gave the fore-mentioned suspicious man a wary glance as they passed the three.

"I just have to pick up something this time—"

"Oh-_ho_!" Kemo thundered, crossing his arms. "Last time it was dropping off some invisible package, and now it's picking something up, huh?"

Kyouko innocently turned to Bakura. "What's he talking about, ji-chan? Dropping what off?"

"N-nothing." Bakura swallowed noisily, a faint memory of playing hooky at work to drop in on Kyouko's father slapping him one across the head.

"Exactly! '_Nothing_'!" Kemo boomed. "Now get the hell outta here before I have to 'reject' the two of you loiterers—"

"Bakura-sensei!" A high-pitched, breathless voice called out. "You're back, Bakura-sensei— Is your arm better already?"

The bickering pair and Kyouko turned to face three sailor-scout uniform wearing teenage girls that had just walked in the lobby.

One of the girls elbowed the other. "You idiot! That's not _him_!"

"How could we help you anyway?" the third asked breathlessly.

"Look. I just want to get something from Bakura Ryou's desk. I know it's on the third floor—"

All three began to speak at once.

"It is!"

"—Next to the windows—"

"—With the tulips—"

"—And the roses—"

"We'll take you there!"

Kemo broke in. "Hold it right there! I don't even know if this Bakura Ryou guy exists!"

"He's right there! See?" All three cried in chorus, pointing to the glass floor directory sign hanging opposite to the four chrome elevators gleaming at the side.

Sure enough, right under Peach Dance Studio, taught by a Mazaki Anzu was Classical Music Class, underneath were the instructors:a slew of names, and right there, in frosted glass kanji— Bakura Ryou.

"See now?"

"We told you, you big oaf!"

"Of course Bakura-sensei's real!"

"So what? I'm still not authorized to let him go up there—" Kemo shot back, unfazed.

"You don't let this man go up and I'll tell my parents that you should be fired!"

"Me, too!"

"Me, too!"

Kemo immediately shrunk back.

Bakura looked uneasily at the girls, whom were now looking at him quite hungrily. "…Thanks. I think."

"Can we go up now?" Kyouko asked. The three teenagers zeroed in on the little girl Bakura was holding hands with, as if realizing her presence for the first time.

"Oh my _god_!" one of them squealed, covering her mouth with her hand.

"She is _so_ cute!"

"What's your name—?"

"Elevator's open!" Bakura suddenly bellowed, grabbing Kyuko by the trunk and carrying her like a stack of books as he charged into the unusually roomy space.

Two floors later, the doors opened to the three girls all struggling to exit first.

"It's right over there!"

"_I _wanna bring him!"

"No, _me_!"

"Bakura-sensei usually teaches in that classroom—" The first girl pointed to one of the doors in a long hallway at the side of the floor. "But his desk is over there."

The third floor did not disappoint. It was nicely furnished, with white leather couches adorning the sides of the large, pale-blue painted walls of the lobby area. Everything was serene and organized. That is, until Bakura showed his face there.

He was acutely aware that they were making quite a scene of themselves.

So did everyone else on the third floor, apparently, as he pushed past the collecting swarm of people to reach the desk next to the windows with the tulips and the roses.

The desk was pretty empty; there were no funny mugs on the desk top, or little sticky adhesive notes around the sides. There were a few books neatly stacked to one side, and two vases, one with tulips and the other with roses that both had cards still attached to them, on the other.

Taking out the key Ryou had given him and opening the drawer Ryou had directed him to, Bakura could distinctly make out mutters from several of Ryou's female coworkers and a few students as well.

"Is that Bakura-sensei?" one voice hissed in a hushed tone.

"Isn't it?" another asked back.

"He's back so soon… I thought he had hurt his arm and wouldn't be back for at least one more month…"

"He looks kind of different today, don't you think?" the second voice questioned after a moment.

"Yeah… Hotter."

"No! Bakura-sensei was so much more… _elegant_ before!"

This conversation was amongst a pair of teeny boppers.

Bakura glanced up from his momentary search for the file in slight revulsion, effectively silencing the whisperers. As soon as he gave his attention back to the search, however, the hisses increased three fold.

"It _isn't _Bakura-sensei!"

"Then what's he doing looking through Bakura-sensei's things? He has his key, so he must know him… Who is he to our Bakura-sensei?"

"I don't know, but this man is totally gorgeous."

This conversation was amongst a pair of middle-aged women.

…Apparently, Ryou was very popular among the females at work.

Bakura could feel the sensation of bile creeping up his throat. He shook it off when his fingers finally closed on the labeled folder he was looking for. 'Great. Now I gotta get the hell outta here—'

"Um. Um— Excuse me." A particularly brave young woman had scooted over to him, blocking his exit. She blushed as Bakura made forced eye-contact with her, and adverted her eyes.

'Oh, good fucking grief. Why can't I ever get the normal people?' Bakura fought the urge to roll his eyes. "What? I'm in a hurry."

"Um—I— Um…"

"_What_?"

"Well…Um…"

"Spit it _out_, woman! What the hell do you want?"

The crowd gasped at the vulgarity.

"Is this your daughter?" the woman finally cried out, looking the very painful image of a school-girl in anticipation as she pointed to Kyouko, who had taken great interest in plucking out petals from the vase of roses.

She was blocking the world from turning just to ask him if Kyouko was his kid. Bakura opened his mouth to say something unfit for young ears.

"My daddy's Bakura Ryou!" Kyouko piped up. "I'm Bakura Kyouko!"

The woman looked genuinely displeased for a moment, but then her face showed an expression of relief. "So she's not yours?"

"She's sort of half mine," Bakura pondered aloud.

Kyouko sort of was. No other adult spent as much time with the little girl as much as he did, with the exception of Ryou.

The woman's expression fell, along with what seemed like all the other females' on the floor.

Bakura couldn't quite understand the effect he had been having on women lately.

"Where are we going next, ji-chan?" Kyouko asked once Bakura safely placed the file into his bag as the stepped out of Satou Prep.

Bakura grunted and looked around them. It was still too early for lunch.

That little runt didn't have work today either. Bakura sighed.

* * *

"Ooh! Ooh! Is this a game shop, ji-chan?" Kyouko asked eagerly, tugging on Bakura's arm.

"Yeah. The Kame Game Shop," Bakura droned, reading the sign accompanying the small store the two had just spent twenty minutes journeying to. Bakura glanced at another sign posted against the door as he pushed it open. It was one of those 'no shoes, no shirt, no service' signs. That seemed ordinary enough… until Bakura noticed the messily scrawled handwriting underneath, complete with an arrow pointing to the printed warning above:

'Shoes required, because you might hurt yourself,' it declared. 'Shirts required, because you aren't as good looking as you think.'

Underneath that was a flourished scribble of 'Thanks, from the owner'.

…So. The insanity ran in the family.

"Oh my god! I'm going to kill myself!" a familiar voice complained from what appeared to be several staggering from side-to-side boxed staggering out of a small back room behind the cashier counter.

"Sorry. I forget to bring the rope outside of work," Bakura quipped snidely as both he and Kyouko entered.

Yuugi's head poked out from one side. "Youtai-kun!" he greeted. Yuugi quickly dropped the boxes with a loud thud on the counter, momentarily forgetting them. "Whatcha doing here?" he asked.

"Believe me, Mutou. If I had anywhere else to go today this early, I would have gone already."

"Aww, you say the sweetest things, dontcha?" Yuugi grinned. "Huh?" He peered over the counter, which was quite a feat for him. "Oh, wow! What a cute kid you've got there!"

"I'm Kyouko!" the little girl greeted.

"Yuugi!" a wheezy voice called from the back room. "Why did you stop helping your old grandpa with the boxes? Grandpa's getting old, and he might push the daisies any moment! Youngsters these days—all you people care about are your Blueberries and your Frontkicks—"

"Blackberries and Sidekicks, Grandpa!" Yuugi corrrected as he called back. "I'll be there in just a sec!"

On Yuugi's break, Kyouko ran about poking this toy and tapping that one, and Bakura leaned against the counter to watch as Yuugi sat on a chair behind it cradling his head with his palms.

Yuugi didn't start babbling, probably too tired from hauling boxes of merchandise back and forth.

"Wow, Youtai-kun," he finally said, after a few mintues of observation. "She looks a lot like you."

"Hey!" Bakura barked, wheeling around to face him. "This is my neighbor's kid, alright, so don't start getting any of your smart ideas. I'm just looking after her for a day."

"Oh, you mean you're the babysitter?" Yuugi nodded along understandingly.

"_Hey_!"

Yuugi frowned after another moment, and tilted his head to the side in a puzzled manner. "When did you become such a nice person, Youtai-kun?"

That question tagged along with Bakura even after they left to eat.

"After lunch, we can go to the park," Bakura instructed.

"Okay!"

After a quick stop to the Burger World near Kaiba Corp, and slathering on a more-than-adequate amount of sunscreen on Kyouko's face and exposed limbs to prevent her pale skin from burning up to a tomato shade at the Domino City Park, Yuugi's simple question echoed again as Bakura sat down in the shade.

When did Bakura start being such a nice person?

All these things he was doing for Ryou, it didn't seem so much as what a doctor, for a lack of a better word, would do for a patient, or even what a neighbor would do for a neighbor than… something.

Something for something else.

At the end of the day, Bakura took Kyouko back to the apartment building where Ryou waited for them.

The father looked a bit paler than that of the usual glow he had recently adopted, but Bakura didn't bother asking any questions.

* * *

"Daddy! Daddy! How's your arm now?" Kyouko asked, examining not unlike a little kid with an insect.

Ryou held both his arms closer to himself in his seat on his couch. "It's fine now, Kyouko-chan. Honestly."

Bakura grunted as he erased the stray marks on his latest drawing for Kyouko. "Let your dad breathe, kid," he muttered in a scolding manner, brushing away the eraser shavings from the paper.

"Aren't you excited that Daddy got his cast thingy off, ji-chan?"

"Yeah. But I got over it two days ago. When he got it off. Now leave him alone. He still has a lot of stuff to do for work tomorrow."

It had been more or less exactly two months since that dinner in that seafood restaurant next to the park east of the apartment building.

"Aww… I wish you didn't have to go back to work so fast, Daddy," Kyouko said, taking the drawing glumly from Bakura's outstretched arm.

"Hmm. That concert that you were supposed to be in. Wasn't that in May?"

"Yes. The Nanase Concert. It was just about three and a half weeks ago."

That's right. It was almost the end of June now.

"Oh." Bakura couldn't think of an appropriate response. "I guess you'll get to do it next time."

"It's for certain, actually," Ryou replied quietly. "I've been asked to perform in another concert."

Bakura sat up straighter. "Really? You seriously get to be in the next one?"

"I broke my arm," Ryou snapped, a bit miffed at the reaction. "I didn't die."

"Well, I know that," Bakura cagily answered. "It's just that you haven't touched a piano in two months."

"The concert's in another two months. I can manage."

"What song are you playing, Daddy?"

"The same song that I was planning to play in the the May concert."

"Really? Really? Really?" Kyouko bounced up and down in her seat. "You finished it, Daddy?"

"Yes… I just had to piece what I had done at work to the portion I worked on while at home recently…"

Was that why Ryou had asked Bakura to go take that file for him? So it wasn't a façade, as Bakura had previously thought. Ryou genuinely needed the folder.

Oh.

"Can you play it now, then? Ji-chan never got to hear any of it. I bet he's dying to listen!"

Bakura grinned, leaving his inner conversation to the side. "You heard your sweet little daughter, Ryou? I'm 'dying to listen'. You don't want to be my murderer, do you?"

"…If I did, I would have made my move a long time ago," Ryou muttered darkly.

Ryou's new found sense of humor didn't tickle Bakura's funny bone too much.

"Do it, Daddy!" Kyouko urged.

Ryou paused, frowning to himself.

"Think of it as a favor for me," Bakura suggested.

That seemed to be the magic phrase, for the other man finally got up, and muttered something about how he was bound to make several mistakes as he strode over to his piano and opened his folder crammed with sheets. He took out a few pieces clipped together and sat down on the bench.

After grumbling something else unintelligible, the man slowly played a short series of warm-ups, to which Kyouko echoed in an off-key, sing-song voice.

Bakura didn't know much about music in general, let alone classical music, but he could confidently say that the piece Ryou finally started to play was… nice.

He wasn't so good at being articulate with his words either, so he couldn't find any other adjectives to do the piece justice.

As he sat on the couch watching Ryou read more or less effortlessly through the sheets, Bakura could feel his face starting to burn, so it must have started to getting blotchy as well. It felt like he was intruding on the moment, almost, to be listening to Ryou play right in front of him.

But what the man felt even more than the embarrassment of trespassing was the embarrassment that arose when one felt flattered.

Bakura was in a bit of a daze the next morning at work.

It didn't last long.

"_Can't beat my,_

_Can't beat my,_

_No they can't beat my Brooklyn Rage,_

_I don't wanna be a furry_—"

That jolted Bakura right up with a goose-bumped shudder. "What the _fuck_ was that, Mutou?"

Yuugi stopped bopping his head to the imaginary music in his head for a moment. "You've never heard of it, Youtai-kun?"

"Thank _god_, no."

"'Brooklyn Rage!' It's a really catchy song."

"In what language? _Martian_?"

"Hey, my English isn't that bad—"

"I don't care whatever the hell it is. Just stop—_stop_ singing."

"Aww… You don't like it?"

"No," Bakura grouched, going back to work now that he had been permanently been pulled out of his stupor.

He wasn't about to tell that airhead he had started getting into classical instead.

* * *

"When's your birthday, Ryou?"

This was one of the many random questions Bakura would sometimes ask without warning, or warm-up, in Ryou's case, to spur some conversation.

It was the usual time when the rapid-fire rained down the most, after Kyouko had gone off to bed.

"September second."

"…Okay." Fine. Bakura would do the follow-up this time as well. "How old are you going to be?"

"Twenty-five."

Bakura was taken back. Ryou was older than him by a good two years. Judging from how he used to look like way back when they first met— in late February— Bakura had pinned him to be maybe twenty-three or twenty-four, but that was what he had for possible maximum age.

Twenty-five. Wow. So was Kyouko really born when he was around nineteen?

'Don't do it,' Bakura warned himself. 'Don't ask. _Don't_ ask—'

"Why do you want to know?" Ryou questioned back after a moment.

"…It seemed sort of natural to. You have any plans, then?"

"No, not yet."

"Hey, you know what? We should go drinking then— I think we deserve it, right?"

Bakura was trying to get Ryou more comfortable with sociality. He really was. He swore it wasn't just his interest in the man, though he had to admit that was a huge factor.

Ryou stared at him silently for a moment. "It would be better not to. I...I get drunk easily."

"Oh. Then I guess forget it." Bakura brushed off the refusal as easily as he could.

Why did it sound like Ryou was lying to him?

As June finally crawled passed and July began, that suspicion flared up at unsteady intervals. Bakura was not an expert when it came to picking out lies, but he could definitely tell when someone was guilty of something.

Ryou was guilty of something. There was no doubt about it.

He continued to tell himself no good would come out of his pushing the man to spill all secrets about himself, however. The last thing he wanted was another incident.

"…Bakura-san."

The man in question looked up from stuffing his face with chips to the person who had called him. He must have made a face, because then Ryou looked slightly more distressed than he did before he had left to tuck his daughter in a few minutes ago one early July evening.

Bakura swallowed with a cough and wiped the crumbs away from his mouth with his arm. He pointed to himself. "Me?"

Ryou scowled, apparently taking offense. "Do you see anyone else in this room I could be talking to? I don't address myself in third person," he snapped. He had, for a moment, the flare that seemed to be missing from him recently. "…Or would you perhaps prefer me to call you by your last name as usual?"

His tone sounded different when he said that last part.

"N-no— I don't mind you calling me by first name. It was just… kind of sudden."

Ryou looked truly worried. "Was it?"

It wasn't really. It had been just over two and a half months since they reconciled with each other. That was probably what Ryou was referring to.

"No, I just mean, how you said it right then. You surprised me, that's all," Bakura explained lamely. He sat up. "What do you want?" he asked as Ryou sat down in his customary set in front of him.

Ryou exhaled. "Why are you so nice to me?"

"…What?"

"You're nice to me— Not back when we first met, but now— You're nice to me now."

"So? … There's nothing wrong with that…"

Was there? Ryou was starting to make him feel uneasy. Was he really being such an unnaturally kind person to the man that Ryou himself was starting to ask him about it? Yes, Yuugi mentioned it, too, but he never put much stock in what Yuugi had to say, anyhow.

"There _is_! _You_ just haven't figured it out yet!" Ryou suddenly shouted.

"What the hell are you yelling for?" Bakura sat up completely.

"You shouldn't be nice! Just stop it—"

"I'm not faking it! Is that what you're thinking?"

"No! That's the problem, don't you understand?" Ryou fired urgently.

"Damn it, Ryou! What the hell is your problem—?"

"I'm not a good person." Ryou kept his eyes on his gloves, fidgeting with them repeatedly. "I'm really _not_," he repeated forcefully.

Was this some kind of joke? Bakura would have thought so in any other situation, but this was Ryou they were talking about here.

Bakura chuckled nervously. "What—"

"Listen! You helping me is very much appreciated, but you should know that you're the victim here, not me!"

His choice of words chilled Bakura.

"Remember that time I asked you to look after Kyouko-chan for a day?" Ryou was beginning to speak quickly.

"Yeah. You said you had an errand to run—"

"I went to a funeral that day—_That_ was the errand! My guardian's funeral— the woman that was in charge of me as a child— Her medical bills, her debts, the funeral costs—I've been paying for all of them. That's why I live here. That's why I drove that fucking car that almost made Kyouko an orphan—" Ryou continued. "She had been sick for months—and then she suddenly died in the hospital—That's why I was so fucking afraid for Kyouko after that accident— _She_ was the person I compared you to—"

"W-what's this got to do with you calling yourself a bad person?"

"I _am_ a bad person!" Ryou hissed hysterically, motioning to himself with his hands wildly. " Do you know how jealous of you I was at one point? You—the sole disappointment of a well-off family of doctors— I never did a fucking thing wrong in the orphanage or that woman's house—_ My own fucking parents actually left me as a baby but you know what? I_ was the perfect child!"

Ryou bolted up, and began to speak rapidly as he paced around the room.

"I even took up piano at seven to get away from her smoking. Her _smoking_ and her _drinking_— both of which started once her husband died. I was only chosen to be her child because her husband and her wanted one so damn much— Once he was gone, I was deemed unnecessary— Why the fuck would she care if I got hurt? It was either the _crying_ or the _smoking_ and _drinking_—" Ryou's voice sounded disturbingly ugly as he spat out those words. "She did both, and she only made _these_ when she was drunk—" Ryou seethed, clasping one hand with the other, as if to hide the ugly, circular scars.

Ryou turned to face Bakura, who had not moved from his seat. "Instead of the drinking, I put in all my fucking effort into hating people that smoked— people like you," Ryou bit out dryly. "You want to know why, Bakura?" he voice dropping to a silky murmur.

It felt like half of Bakura's body suddenly felt hot. The other half was cold-prickly, numbing cold.

He said nothing.

"It's because I started drinking, too," Ryou whispered. "I found that I enjoyed it. I started as a teenager, and I _kept_ doing it because my piano playing wasn't affected. Did you know that it was only due to Kyouko-chan's presence in my life that I finally stopped drinking so much?"

Bakura could feel a steady thud repeating slowly over and over in his chest.

Things were starting to fall into place as to what Ryou was confessing.

"You see? That's why I'm a bad person. You're helping a hypocritical, deceitful, and childish man. I even lied to you about getting drunk easily just so you would drop the subject! Look at you!" Ryou said bitterly. "Shocked? Angry? Betrayed? Choose one. Choose them all," he spat.

…Wasn't this what Bakura had always wanted Ryou to do? Tell him things of his own accord?

Bakura finally found his voice. "Why are you telling me this now?" he finally asked.

"Because I couldn't _take it anymore_!" Ryou screamed, throwing up his hands. "All this time after I told you I would accept your help if you quit smoking—up until these couple of months—up until you told me that you were still willing to help me even after I blamed you for placing Kyouko-chan under your temporary care the day of that accident, I thought you fucking deserved being played— But you don't, Bakura! You're a _victim_, alright?"

'I'm the victim?' Bakura echoed to himself.

No. No, that _isn't _right.

Ryou collapsed back onto his couch. "I appreciate all you've done," he continued softly.

"I didn't really help," Bakura suddenly blurted out in confession. "Because… I never actually ever helped you with your haphephobia—"

Because he had been avoiding it. Fear of rejection, for one. But also that _other_ reason, that other reason that had started forming those two and a half months ago that he had been trying to tell himself did not exist.

"Don't blame yourself," Ryou retorted. "You did more for me that I've ever even allowed for myself. I never outwardly sought treatment because I thought for so long that it would be better for no contact between myself and others, even with Kyouko-chan. That it would be so much easier to blame everyone else but myself… What I am trying to tell you is that— I understand if you won't want to help after this."

What?

"I feel _guilty _for forcing you into this. I don't deserve your help. I don't care that you haven't actually been able to help me with my fears—You've done so much already, and I thank you for it from the bottom of my heart. I'll find a doctor and I'll— I'll try to explain to Kyouko why you might not visit anymore—"

"No! I want to stay," Bakura heard himself say firmly. "I quit smoking. I'm not going back."

"I don't deserve it—"

"Shut up, Ryou. You do, alright? You do deserve it. I don't want to hear you saying that kind of shit about making me leave again. I mean it."

Why?

There was that part that did feel shocked, feel angered, feel betrayed. It was that part that could have just made Bakura go find a good doctor, perhaps through Marik, to help him heal his phobia professionally.

That would have been the case if Bakura was truly _only_ concerned about Ryou's and Kyouko's wellbeing.

But there existed a larger part of Bakura that did not agree to this. It was this part that had wanted Ryou to notice him in the first place, It was this part that wanted Ryou to accept his aid, to tell him more about himself. It was this part that felt absolutely _ecstatic _that Ryou was telling him all of _this_.

And it was now this very same part that realized _he_ wanted to be the first person Ryou touched.

That was the other reason he had wanted to stay.

This realization terrified him.

* * *

**Author's Note: **Looking back at it, this chapter, especially the last scene, is sort of an example why it seems sort of odd that this story is labeled under humor, isn't it? It's sorta weird like that for this fan fiction… Well, this chapter doesn't represent the entire story, and I mostly feel that this is a pretty light-hearted story. :)

I took Bakura's notes from a site called _dailystrengths_.

The references! Hey, how about that mention of the illustrious freaky fish guy Mako? The cool **tenspeed457** pointed out the relationship between his name and the mako shark.

I told you Satou Prep would be mentioned again! Here again was Kemo's cameo, along with Anzu, the dancer who apparently has her own studio in this universe! Eh? _Eh_? (elbow jab) Did you catch that?

I really liked the wonderful **ch-ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb**'s phrasing of Bakura's past in one of her lovely reviews: "the disappointment of a wealthy family", so I had Ryou spit out something similar to that line.

The part about the "Blueberries" and "Frontkicks" is a bit of a running gag in my old history class. I own neither the Blackberry nor the Sidekick smart phones. The part about the "no shoes, no shirts, no service" sign is from a bit joke in the Reader's Digest magazine, which I also do not own.

Yuugi was singing the infamous "Brookyln Rage" in this chapter— a pretty pointless reference, if I do say so myself.

There was one AWESOME **perceptive reader**, and damn it, I wish I could find the person's identity and the comment left again— perhaps it was a private message— who realized the possibility that the person Ryou had always been comparing Bakura to was, in fact, female, based on the ambiguety of the pronoun that Ryou used way back in chapter seven or so.

There might be questions as to how Ryou's past sort of exploded this way. Basically, at the rate and way Bakura was thinking, I figured it would be impossible to have him slowly piece out whatever random fact Ryou might drop his way. As for Ryou being adopted and being what he called "the perfect child", that is simply to completely contrast with Bakura's upbringing as the surprising rebel by his own blood-related family. Being adopted really has no other signifcance, so please don't read too much into it!


	12. Threshold

"I think I'm getting sick," Bakura groaned out loud as he rolled over in his futon, his sweat making his bangs stick extremely uncomfortably over his forehead. He had just woken up again in the middle of the night. He checked his cell phone. It was just after four o'clock in the morning. He made another groan, and tried to fall back asleep.

It wasn't working.

Bakura raked the hair out of his face as he crawled over sluggishly to a dresser and tried to find a rubber band to tie his "god-damn-it's-like-a-fucking-sauna-with-this-down-damn-it" hair. His quest was made in vain, and he let out an angry sigh of frustration as he kicked his fan on his way back to the futon, the motor of which had momentarily stopped the blades from moving.

After the contraption wheezed back to life, Bakura sank back down into his messy sheets to fan himself with a hand.

It felt kind of hot in the room sometimes. It wasn't because he only had a cheap electric fan choking out bursts of wind from time to time to combat the rest of the humid July nights, either. At work, even though Kaiba had the air conditioning system turned on full blast to maximize worker-efficiency, the nearly sticky feeling still made itself right at home on Bakura's body. The clingy heat had started to follow him everywhere ever since Ryou had dropped that bombshell on him.

"Whodathunkit?" as Yuugi would have said in reaction to Ryou's little reveal-all episode just three nights ago. Luckily, Yuugi wasn't here, and if Bakura could help it, the short man would forever only know that "Ryou" was just a random neighbor who had socked him one, the details of which were on a need-to-know basis… And Yuugi definitely did _not _need-to-know.

Bakura didn't know what the meaning behind the odd heated feeling behind his ears and the nape of his shoulders was. It was everywhere: at Kaiba Corp, at home, on the train, looming hot and heavy.

Maybe he caught something. That had to be it; he must have caught some kind of bug or something recently. Maybe he should go see Marik.

He didn't feel particularly weak in the limbs or have any runny sinuses though. It was more like…Bakura tried to tack a few words to it. It was more like anxiety and after-shock rolled into a ball, and then vaporized by one of Ryou's patented dirty glares so that it hung over him like a heavy blanket.

Bakura's eyes snapped open at the word "anxiety"… That wasn't good. Hell, that was never good.

Nonetheless, he was fairly certain it had nothing to do with his little self-confession concerning Ryou.

Somewhat certain.

Damn it, he hoped that didn't have anything to do with it.

Bakura rolled to the other side, but it was hopeless.

'No sleep tonight,' a voice sang gleefully in Bakura's ear. 'You know why you can't fall asleep, don't you?' The voice continued before he could answer. 'You know what you want to do,' the voice muttered seriously. 'You can't stop thinking about it.'

Bakura tried to ignore the voice.

The truth was eating away at him, and truth be told, it did not have to do with what Ryou had told him. Scratching at his head furiously, Bakura finally sat up again. He plucked his tee shirt away from his body, and began to rapidly tug at it back an forth to create some kind of wind. The feeble gusts only made the heat more noticeable.

Bakura gave up, and tried not to think too hard as he pulled the cord dangling from the ceiling to turn on the lamp over head. Glancing over at his dresser, and then turning his eyes away from it, the white-haired man clutched nervously at his sweat-flushed face, repeatedly dragging his fingers down his chin.

His gaze zeroing in on a wall, the wall that was between 601 and 603, Bakura continued his odd antics.

Ryou was probably sleeping right now.

He slapped himself. It stung.

Rubbing at his cheek, Bakura flitted anxiously to his kitchenette. His hands shook as he clawed through his cabinets, desperately trying to find something to eat. When his hands managed to clutch a bag of chips, Bakura could distinctly feel the clench around something inside loosen momentarily.

Eagerly grabbing the bag out and reveling in the sounds that the cellophane made when he ripped the small bag open, Bakura paced back to his bedroom, stuffing his mouth with the snack.

He sat down, cross-legged, on his futon as he mechanically ate.

Cursing roughly, Bakura threw the bag down in mid-crunch.

It wasn't enough. He couldn't relax.

Bakura stumbled to get back up, staring down at the scattered chips over the sheets.

He looked over to his dresser, and numbly walked over to it to pull out the only thing he could think of to ease whatever he was feeling.

Sitting back down, Bakura began to reread the notes he had on haphephobia.

* * *

Exposure therapy. Bakura had used this recognized method of treatment without really ever realizing it. But he had started on the extreme end. He had started it by what was known as "flooding", which exposed the patient to the "most extreme item in a fear hierarchy."

He regretted it.

Cognitive behavioral therapy… one that included a multitude of approaches, depending on the problem. He had circled and underlined the ones most suitable in this case. No treatment would produce perfect results overnight. That was okay, though. Though Ryou understood the irrationality of his fear, Bakura knew that it would take much time and effort to truly heal the man. There therapies were supposed to concentrate on Ryou and Ryou alone, and however long it took would be however long it took. When days turned to weeks, Ryou didn't complain once.

Ryou acted differently. Ever since that night, the anger that used to radiate off the man in hateful, acerbic lashes simply…vanished. He became almost civil, most likely because he had finally admitted what had probably been hanging over the man for years.

Bakura tried not to parallel that with the sticky mess he seemed to currently be in.

There was improvement on Ryou's part, though still none in the matter of actual touching. Bakura continued to hang back even though he had already admitted to the other man that the former was not-all-as-he-was-cracked-up-to-be if there was never any actual touching. Any reminder to his self-confession would immediately bring about another session of nausea and hand-wringing.

But he found that he did not mind repeating his trips to 601. He found off and slightly unnerving comfort in visiting Ryou over and over. These methods of therapy were ones that required "honesty and openness between the patient and therapist", and that reason alone was more than sufficient to have the nearly twenty-three year old man trot obediently to Ryou's home every night.

Of course, that wasn't the only reason, but again, Bakura tried not to think too deeply about that.

He enjoyed being in Ryou's and Kyouko's company. The idea came so gradually that it took a while for Bakura to realize what had changed in himself.

"Earth to Youtai-kun!" a voice sang. "Earth to Youtai-kun…! Youtai-kun. Youtai-kun? Youtai-kun, wake up! Hey!"

Bakura was jerked out of his daze by an elbow stabbing his side irritatingly. He glared to his side. "What, Mutou? What could you possibly want?"

"Look, look!" Yuugi held up a newspaper and jabbed excitedly at the front cover. Bakura squinted at the headlines, the prolonged screen glare having made it rather difficult for his eyes to focus recently. '_New Tomb Found in Egypt_,' the bolded Japanese announced.

"So?"

"'So'?" Yuugi repeated incredulously. "'_So_'? _So_ we have to make a field trip down there! They say it's the 'archeological find of the millennium', Youtai-kun! Domino University's archaeological team actually found a pharaoh's tomb! Isn't that super special awesome?"

"No, it's not super special awesome," Bakura snapped, jiggling his mouse back and forth to return from the screensaver. "Why the hell should I go? More importantly, why the hell should I go with you? We're not Egyptian."

"We might have been in another life," Yuugi said vaguely.

"…I'm going to start tuning you out now."

"No, wait! I wanted us to go because it'll really help with our character designs, Youtai-kun! It opens tomorrow, and that's perfect because both of us are off from work then! C'mon, it'll be really inspirational!"

Bakura paused. Ryou had said something about cooking curry for tomorrow's lunch to Kyouko last night. And he always managed to get a bit of whatever Ryou cooked. "No deal."

"What?" Yuugi sounded genuinely shocked. "But you've always taken work and researching this kind of stuff really seriously, Youtai-kun!…Are you sick?" he demanded, suddenly reaching over to feel the man's forehead with the back of his hand.

"Back the hell off, Mutou!" Bakura barked, swatting the hand back.

But the gears in his brain were already turning. And pretty rapidly, too. Yuugi was right. He, in any other circumstances, would have gone even if that mean having to spend out-of-work time with his coworker. A simple thought of what Ryou was going to cook had completely blocked his former priorities from mind. "Fine! I'll go with you, alright? Now stop bringing it up."

Later that night, Bakura told Ryou of the change in plans. The other man was absolutely complacent about it, so complacent that it almost hurt Bakura's feelings, strangely enough. Almost. Of course, Kyouko wheedled and clung to Bakura's leg, making him resort to dragging a delighted, screaming child around the apartment wherever he moved. She improved his mood.

Bakura was to meet Yuugi there in front of Domino City Museum the next afternoon. He read the banner strung to the side now announcing the exhibit as he waited: '_Egypt Unearthed_.' Somewhat regretting that he was going to be missing curry for this, he sighed.

"Youtai-kun, I'm here!" The short man ran up the steps leading up to the museum's entrance as quickly as his short, stubby legs could take him. "Did you wait long?"

"No," Bakura muttered. He stared at all the gear Yuugi had taken along with him. "What the hell is all of that?" He had only brought a sketchbook with him, but his bubbly colleague had gone all out. There were two separate cameras hanging around his neck, a camcorder in his hand, and a backpack over his shoulders that undoubtedly housed even more things.

"I'm being prepared!"

"You look like a fucking tourist!" Bakura yelled. "Complete with that loud shirt!"

"Hey, this happens to be my favorite shirt," Yuugi defended, looking down at the multi-patterned, multi-colored button-down.

"It looks like it belongs to Frankenstein," Bakura snapped, rubbing wearily at the bridge of his nose. "Whatever. Let's just go."

"Yay! Let's start the field trip!" Yuugi bounced up and down eagerly on the heels of his sneakers as the two walked in.

Regularly, Bakura wouldn't have been as distracted as he was as the pair of them slowly traveled along the Egyptian exhibit. He would have gotten right to business and begin sketching things he thought were of particular interest, and pay little or no mind to anything else until he was done.

But he found that he couldn't focus on this trip. His thoughts continually went astray, the majority of them heading toward the lunch that he was missing to do this stupid research. Bakura stared blankly into a display case, pencil in one hand and sketchpad in the other.

"Wow! Look at this, Youtai-kun! There's this really cool monster called the _ammit_ that's part crocodile, part hippo, and part lion! …Youtai-kun?"

Bakura was once again jolted uncomfortably from his thoughts. "Eh? Yeah. Sure, do whatever the hell you want, Mutou," he mumbled automatically.

"Are you tired?" Yuugi asked sympathetically. "If you're tired, you should rest."

"Huh…yeah. I just need to… sit down for a bit." Dazedly looking around to find a seat, Bakura finally located a bench near the exit of the exhibit.

"Okay, I'll just tidy the rest up myself, then," Yuugi replied.

Bakura grunted noncommittally. His wandering gaze found its way out of the doors of the Egyptian exhibit and into the doorway of another one: 'Classical Instruments and Their Origins'.

Imagining Ryou play the piano in the banner should have been the last thing on his mind, not the first.

Bakura promptly returned to Ryou's side that evening. The latter looked rather confused when he opened the door of his apartment. "…Bakura-san."

"Hey," Bakrua greeted lamely. Ryou took another glance at the lip-biting, hand-wringing man, and fluidly let him in.

"Ji-chan!" Kyouko squealed, promptly planting herself onto Bakura's front with a hug. "You're back!"

"Yeah." Taking a deep, shaking inhale, Bakura relaxed. His lower lip escaped the clutches of the constant gnawing by his upper teeth, and his arms came down easily to his sides.

"I didn't think that you'd come by tonight, Bakura-san," Ryou said out loud as he walked into the kitchenette. "Didn't you have work to do at the museum today?"

"I did. I came by after closing." Bakura didn't know why he was feeling embarrassed.

"Have you eaten dinner yet?"

"…No."

Ryou temporarily set down the dishes that he was tinkering around with, and peered over the sink looking out into the living area. "You didn't eat and you came to visit?"

Bakura involuntarily tore away from the man's perfectly circular chocolate-brown irises. "…Uh."

"You're in luck," Ryou continued without waiting for a coherent reply, his eyes turning back to the dishes. "I have some leftover curry from lunch. Would you like a bowl?"

The man wasn't smiling. Hell, the words he used weren't even that nice. But Bakura embraced the gesture all the same, just like he embraced everything that happened in apartment 601.

"Yeah."

As he watched an old Slenderman movie rerun with Kyouko later and felt the presence of Ryou in the sofa beside him, the imaginary clench tightened and loosened at the same time. Even when Ryou sharply told Bakura that "this is clearly not a children's movie" when the strange, tall man without a face scarfed down a little kid with one gulp, Bakura didn't mind the lecture.

* * *

Things continued to change.

But some not for the better, according to one panicking, anxious Youtai Bakura.

The fear came back.

It returned like a mad dog out of the gate, howling in ear-splitting screeches, and snapping its foaming, saliva-dripping jaws at Bakura's ankles.

"Gosh, you're always day-dreaming now, Youtai-kun! I've been calling you for the last minute already! Hand me your sketches."

Bakura silently complied, and in a moment, was once again drifting off with his eyes open.

"Hey…" Yuugi called slowly, waving a hand wildly in front of Bakura's face. "_Hey_!" he shouted out a moment later.

"_What_?"

"I said, do you wanna visit Kaiba-kun with me to hand in the sketches before we leave today? Oh, I was thinking—maybe I should actually go challenge Kaiba-kun for a game in Duel Monsters! I have my deck planned and everything! I really believe in them! Whatcha think?"

Bakura snorted. "What, you think you have a spiritual connection with the cards that you seriously think for even one second that you can win? Kaiba made the damn game. Either way," he said, holding up a hand to pause any outbursts, "leave me out of it. I've got a shit load of stuff to do after I leave," he continued, ordering his papers together.

"Hey! I really believe in the connection! I only chose the cards that _we_ designed, Youtai-kun! There _is_ a heart of the cards—"

"Don't wanna hear it," Bakura interrupted loudly.

Yuugi sighed exaggeratedly. "You'll see when I beat the pants off of Kaiba-kun."

"Right."

Yuugi sighed again, but then instantly perked up. "You said that you have a lot of stuff to do after work, Youtai-kun! Looks like you're always the first one out the doors these days." He elbowed Bakura's shoulder in good-natured jest. "Doing something that can't see the light of day?"

Bakura rolled his eyes as he peeled open a pack of gum. "I never told you this, Mutou, but I'm actually a criminal. By day, video-game designer, by night, a robber and all that shit. Don't you know what they call me on the streets? The _Thief King_."

"Yeah, right!" Yuugi chortled. "Come on, tell me for real!" the man wheedled, shaking his arm.

It wouldn't hurt to tell him a little bit, Bakura supposed. "I'm doing my neighbor—" he began but then paused as the strip came dangerously close to falling down his throat. He gagged as he coughed it back up.

Yuugi's eyes became impossibly wide. "You're _what_?"

Bakura's own eyes bulged out as he realized what kind of dirty things the child-like mind of Yuugi was thinking. "_A favor_, Mutou! I'm doing my neighbor a _favor_!"

"Oh, so that's it." The pointy-haired man nodded along understandingly. He thought for a moment. "Is this the same neighbor who had you look after their kid that one time?"

"Yeah…" Bakura muttered, throwing out the wasted gum in the mesh garbage bin beneath his desk.

"Wow! You have all kinds of interesting relationships with your neighbors, don't you?" Yuugi remarked. "I remember you telling me about that one guy, Ryou-san, wasn't it?" Bakura grunted in concordance, not really sure where Yuugi was going with this. "Didn't you say he beat you up once? But you guys are okay now, right?"

"Yeah," Bakura repeated.

He didn't bother telling Yuugi that these neighbors were one and the same.

Bakura tried to erase that conversation from memory. Yuugi spouted such ridiculous things as often as he breathed, and so it wasn't that hard to do.

He was just about to forget it, and he was doing a pretty darn good job of it as he took another visit to Ryou's. He sat there on the floor now, content with his snacks and his drawings as Ryou sat down opposite of him.

"Another bag of cookies?" the man questioned mildly.

Kyouko, who joined herself at the hip to Bakura whenever he was around, took a liberal fistful of the extra-crunchy cookies. "Ji-chan likes them!"

"Yep," Bakura agreed, taking his own fistful.

"Why do you like putting all those sugary things in your mouth?" the man asked, his tone in understandable disgust.

Bakura had to defend himself. He didn't want to tell Ryou the real reason—that he needed them to relax—and hey, these snacks tasted really good. "Why? You suggesting something you want to put in there?" he shot back in what was supposed to be in a smart-aleck kind of way.

"Like a lollipop?" Kyouko asked eagerly. Then she turned to Ryou, her braids whipping across her bespectacled face as she did so. "Or does that have sugar, too, Daddy?"

It took a second to sink in.

Bakura began to choke on mid-cookie as his briefly suspended mind warned of 'deja-vu' in bright, neon colors. A particularly crunchy piece broke away from the cookie's whole in his mouth and sailed down his throat. The action left Bakura wheezing and hacking for a moment more as Kyouko urgently smacked his back with her small, open hand repeatedly.

Ryou looked at him with such an odd expression that Bakura's face came _this_ close to being mistaken for a tomato in the snow.

* * *

There shouldn't have been reason for Bakura to act the way he did, he knew. Yuugi's words have always meant nothing to him, and what had transpired in Ryou's apartment was just an ill-timed, perverse joke.

This ill-timed, perverse joke reopened the scab of Yuugi's misunderstanding, though, and that scab hurt bad.

"I never, never, _never _caught on to anything like that before," Bakura whined to himself. The man was once again braving his nightly vigil.

There was a topic tonight: try to think of a reasonable explanation. He thought of one so far:

"It's all because I'm getting a dirty mind," he said out loud, sounding out this possibility. He immediately shot it down. He was almost twenty-three, for Kaiba's sake, not some horny teenager who thought that everything cylindrically shaped was a phallic symbol.

Bakura threw down the pencil he was holding as he continued to think.

"I was embarrassed because they were inappropriate locations to… think of things like that."

That made no sense either. He practically grew up in a private boarding school with nothing but horny teenagers who thought that everything cylindrically shaped was a phallic symbol, despite where they were.

Glad that there was nothing around to throw down this time, Bakura pressed on for the reason.

"It's because…It's because we're both guys," he finally said. Yes! That had to be it. He was uncomfortable with the fact that they were both males and he wasn't accustomed to jokes of… that nature.

He congratulated himself with coming up with such a well-rounded explanation all by himself.

But he had to make sure that this was all it was. Hell, it's been eating him alive for the past few weeks already… There was one way that he could use, one treatment that he could try that involved a lot on the therapist's part to clear this whole thing up, a method that he had ignored because of the sheer anxiety he had thinking about it.

He had been in such denial that he told himself that sooner or later he'd work himself up into being able to touch the man. He broke free from that denial.

He had to face this.

"Massaging?" Ryou's face belied any expression of surprise as the two sat in their usual places. Ryou slowly set down his cup of warmed milk onto the coffee table they surrounded. Kyouko had just been sent off to bed, and her father sat in his seat comfortably now, one long leg enclosed in the usual dark-colored slacks crossed over the other.

"It's completely professional. It's supposed to be really good for you and help your muscles relax." Bakura was trying to sound believable, but it was like pitching a proposal to the company head.

"Do you know how to do it?"

"I know…the basics."

Bakura had been avoiding actually touching Ryou this entire time. Ironic, wasn't it, for the therapist to be avoiding touching his patient who had the irrational fear of touch? But then, the therapist didn't necessarily have to be the masseur…

Ryou was looking at him again, and like before, Bakura found himself looking away.

"You're uncomfortable with the idea," Ryou said quietly, silently retrieving his cup.

"I'm not!" Bakura lied. "I just don't know if you're willing…"

Ryou gave him another long, hard stare. "…I won't mind trying, Bakura-san."

"Really?"

"…I trust your judgment." Ryou set down his cup slowly. "If that's what you want to try to do, I certainly won't stop you." The porcelain cup clinked on the table as it rested there. "Are you…planning to start tonight?"

"…I…I could, if you want."

"Could you tell me what exactly you want to do?"

"Your shoulders and arms… That's what I'm going to concentrate on first."

"I see…" Ryou was beginning to get pale, but then the man bit back whatever initial reaction he had.

Bakura stood up to move onto Ryou's couch. The latter flinched, but made no move to escape.

"Distraction can help," Bakura continued. "And desensitization— that's supposed to put you in uncomfortable, but no panic-provoking situations," he said, reciting lines he remembered from his notes as he sat down right behind him. "You could turn on the TV, maybe."

If felt surreal. He hasn't been in this close contact with Ryou in months, the last of which didn't really pan out well.

"No, not the television," Ryou muttered, his voice sounding oddly different from behind. "Talk instead. Talk about your life before now. Your childhood."

"Eh?" Bakura uttered, rather surprised at the suggestion as he set down a hand on Ryou's right shoulder.

"I want to know. Just do it!" Ryou snapped cagily, sharply turning his head to the side in reaction to Bakura's hand.

Bakura instinctively drew his hand back. "…Why, though?"

"The things you told me before sounded interesting."

"Okay… Uh… My birthday's on November eleventh," Bakura began as he tentatively placed his hand back where it was before. "I was born here in Domino, but I went to a boarding school pretty much my entire life."

"Hm," Ryou muttered tonelessly.

Bakura took this as a green light to start… Scarcely believing what he was doing, Bakura set down his other hand on the opposite shoulder, shoulders that were very warm through the thin fabric of Ryou's buttoned shirt that Ryou's white hair rested on.

He tightened his grip slowly and predictably as he continued. "I have three older sisters, and not even one brother, if you can believe it…"

* * *

Through time, Ryou relaxed enough not to flinch when Bakura reached for his shoulders. It improved to the point where the former would stay perfectly still for when Bakura would touch him there.

Numerous breaks needed to be taken between sessions within the same day or night, but as each session slowly outlived the last, both knew that it was getting somewhere. It was a long path, to get from his shoulders to his arms. When it happened, though, Bakura changed his position so that he sat in front of Ryou instead of behind him.

Seeing Ryou constantly in front was a change that Bakura had difficulty living with. He realized that Ryou would keep his eyes open when he massaged him, and seeing those brown eyes flitter back and forth and landing on him made Bakura self-conscious to the point that it sounded embarrassing even thinking about it.

Did Bakura feel guilty for trying to sort out his own troubles by touching Ryou while simultaneously trying to heal the man? Of course. But there are two sides to every coin. And Bakura was confused as he was in trying to find the answer without thinking of the problem.

It was just too bad that the problem came knocking on his door again before he found an answer to greet it.

Domino City was currently in the middle of August. The heat was getting to be unbearable, but Ryou never once took off his gloves. He had swapped his thicker pair of cotton ones for a slightly thinner pair, and turned on the air conditioner in the apartment to levels that rivaled Kaiba Corp's, but that was about it.

"…So that's the reason I joined Kaiba Corp…"

Bakura had never went so far into venturing down _there_ with his crappy massages, and maybe it was the avoidance that was stopping him from settling his inner-debate once and for all.

It most likely wasn't, but Bakura opened his big, fat mouth anyhow.

"I want to go further," he suddenly blurted out, looking up from his hold on Ryou's just-relaxed forearm.

Ryou blinked. "Excuse me?"

There was a silence, in which only Kyouko's echoing bath-time singing could be heard in the bathroom a little further down.

"…Would you mind if I massaged your wrists… and palms?" Bakura suddenly found himself struggling to speak coherently. They were pretty simple, everyday words, yet the two might as well have been the words of the devil for all Bakura knew.

Ryou blinked rapidly twice again, and then looked down at his gloved hands. "It…won't be very comfortable If I have my gloves on," he said flatly.

"…I know."

"You want me to take them off." It didn't even sound like a question.

Bakura swallowed. He wondered where all that courage went. It leaked out of his head, probably, just like logic and reason did all the time. "If you don't want to, that's fine," he said in a quick, qualifying manner. "We can always work on that later…" His own hands were clasped over his jean-clad kneecaps, suddenly sweaty.

Ryou remained silent. Then he let out such a soft exhale that the sound melted into the quiet hum of the air conditioner in the background.

But then Ryou pulled on the tip of the middle finger of his right glove with his left hand, and slowly, very, very slowly, slid it off. "This is because I trust you, Youtai Bakura," he whispered silkily.

His voice sounded eerie in Bakura's head. Bakura was finding it hard to breathe. He couldn't look away.

Ryou's eyes appeared to be half-lidded from Bakura's perspective as he gently placed the removed glove down on his lap with his covered hand. Ryou repeated the motion with his now bare hand, so that the twin rested neatly on top of its brother.

Bakura sat not even twenty centimeters away, so he could see what lay revealed before him very well. The man's hands were pale. He saw the scars, which littered both hands arbitrarily— dark, twisted welts on the otherwise perfect skin.

He blinked when the hands moved, and realized that it was because Ryou had lifted his arm and flipped his wrist over. He held out his left arm in front of them, suspended between them.

Bakura slowly took it by the wrist, and brought it down to his waist level. Although his own hands seemed to burn, Ryou's skin felt cold. The man flinched awfully at the contact, and he let out a pained snarl.

But Bakura continued, entranced now. He wasn't sure to whom the labored breathing belonged to. He cradled the hand that rested there, and pressed both of his thumbs against the place where Ryou's pulse was strongest, wrapping his fingers around the wrist.

'I got to be the first person,' he thought to himself. 'I got to be the first person to touch him like this. _Me_.'

He moved very slowly down the hand, kneading here, touching there. Ryou had somehow managed to stay completely still throughout it all. Bakura finally reached the fingertips, and then he flipped the slowly warming hand over. He repeated his actions, careful to avoid pressing too hard on the scars, but not ignoring their existence either.

By the time Bakura was finished with the other hand, Ryou had finally relaxed. He sat there with his eyes closed, the thin, hard line of his mouth turning into a softer stroke across his face. Bakura took a moment to observe Ryou will his eyes closed as this, and was distracted from it when the latter finally spoke for the first time in minutes.

"…Mmm… You're quite talented, Bakura. It feels very good," Ryou murmured in a low, husky tone. A few of Ryou's fingers very lightly brushed Bakura's wrist.

Bakura seized, blinking rapidly and face flushing at the throaty tone, the heated compliments, and that _touch_. He dropped Ryou's hand, waking the other man from whatever relaxed trance he had fallen in to.

"S-Sorry. I have to go to the bathroom—" Bakura babbled, quickly turning from Ryou's sight.

"Alright," Ryou said, his voice still in that husky tone.

"Yeah—I'll be back—Tomorrow. See you tomorrow." With that pained farewell uttered, Bakura swept his bag up from the floor and left, praying to each and every existing god out there that Ryou would not be able to see the slightly formed tent under the front of the man's jeans.

* * *

'No, no, no! That shouldn't have happened!' Bakura choked out a gasp as he struggled in opening his own apartment's door just down the hall. There was a loud, painful throbbing persisting right above his ears. He shoved the door open, ran in, and slammed it shut behind him.

He raked a shaking hand back through his hair, temporarily pushing his scraggly bangs up as well. "I need to eat," he muttered out loud. Making a bee line to his cabinets, the man flung open all the doors.

"Nothing! Nothing!" he shouted at the empty shelves. "Nothing in here. Nothing there! Nothing happened there!" he continued as he stormed down the short hallway to his bathroom.

He looked in the mirror, and stared at his horrified reflection. His cheeks were flushed, and there was sweat streaming down his forehead. "Water…" Bakura wrenched the knobs of his sink open, and began to splash his face with the cold liquid. "Shower," he muttered. "Shower, shower, shower."

The man stripped down in the matter of seconds, his hands trembling as he pulled down his jeans and boxers. He refused to look down, and quickly stood under the cold spray of his shower for several minutes until he felt the traitorous erection die down.

"I need to get laid— That has to be the problem. I've been spending way too much fucking time with Ryou—" Bakura clenched at his wet hair, tugging at the roots to ease some of the pressure off his mind.

Rubbing his eyes clear from the water that had dripped down from his hair with two clammy, wet hands, Bakura stepped out of the shower, shuddering at the sudden chill. Bakura briskly began to towel himself dry, rubbing the fabric roughly over his face repeatedly.

"I'll find a girlfriend. Soon. I'll go out and pick up a girl— This is what I get for not having a girlfriend for over a year…I'm going to forget all of this shit with Ryou—what Mutou thought I said, what the kid said, and especially, _especially_ what happened ten minutes ago. Ask no questions, get no lies."

Bakura threw down his towel, and rushed to his bedroom to find some clothes. "Ask no questions, get no lies," he repeated. "Ask no questions, get no lies."

He wished he didn't sound so desperate.

* * *

If Ryou thought that anything had gone amiss when Bakura left so suddenly, he didn't say so. That was great, because Bakura was trying really hard to forget his own side of the story.

Bakura went back to Ryou the next day, as promised. It was as if nothing had happened. 'Which it hadn't,' Bakura told himself.

They returned to massaging. Ryou never said a single word or gave a single touch after that first time, and Bakura would end up leaving the Bakura residence with barely a peep from the man.

He supposed it was better that way.

The time finally came when Ryou accepted Kyouko's touch. His daughter was thrilled at the fact that Ryou would suddenly embrace hugs and kisses from her, and was even more thrilled at the fact that Ryou would hug and kiss her back.

Bakura was not there for neither the first time Ryou did either, but watching the father and daughter there hardly made the need for such milestones important. Bakura was a little slow to admit it, but he came to the realization that if he ever wanted to have a kid, he wanted one exactly like Kyouko.

When the girl had asked why her father wore gloves in this heat, Bakura came up with a quick explanation.

"You dad's hands are cold," he said simply.

Kyouko took that to mean that he needed to keep them warm constantly, and so she suggested that she hold her father's hand daily to help.

August continued, and Bakura had put that evening where "nothing happened" deeply tucked in the darkest recesses of his mind. Any thoughts entertaining the idea of a girlfriend to stray his mind from whatever twisted thoughts he had on Ryou were temporarily put on hold when he found himself whisked away to Domino City's Sunshine Nursery School's semi-annual athletic competition.

He couldn't resist going. Like the obedient little puppy that he was, he had eagerly snapped up the invitation that Kyouko had offered, and promptly borrowed Yuugi's camcorder to videotape the event. The other man had gladly lent him the device, on the simple grounds that Bakura tell him what it was for. Bakura came up with the most basic explanation to appease the man.

Ryou seemed to not really care whether Bakura joined them or not, and said nothing as he prepared three lunches instead of two.

Bakura and Ryou sat on their cotton blanket now, practically shoulder-to-shoulder with all the other parents that have come to cheer their kids on as the children got ready to do their exercises. Bakura felt a little awkward there. They were by far the youngest adults there, and their odd hair color already made them stick out like sore thumbs. He tried to downplay his discomfort by keeping his face behind the camcorder and taping everything that came into sight.

A lot of the shots were concentrated on Ryou: Ryou smoothing out the wrinkles on the blanket they were sitting on, Ryou neatly unpacking their bento boxes, Ryou waving at Kyouko as she looked around for them from her place in the group excercises.

Go figure.

Bakura had never participated in anything of the sort like field day at his own school. He had a stuffy, starchy uniform and the only pairs of shoes that his parent gave him to wear there were the fancy leather lace-up kinds. Of course, he and Marik always had a hell of a time defying authority despite their lack of resources. He watched the mob of children performing a series of jumping jacks in unison with their teachers through the lenses of the camcorder, and zeroed in on Kyouko in particular. She was turning into a beet kind of shade in the heat, and Bakura was glad that all three had slathered on a good deal of sunblock before leaving the apartment building that morning.

Growing bored waiting for the excercises to end, his attention wandered to a conversation behind him.

"So then little Makoto-chan got blood all over his uniform! He managed to turn the whole front red. It was awful," a woman said to her neighbor.

"That _is_ awful!" another woman replied in a hushed tone. "The entire front? That must have been such a pain to clean."

"It _was_...! But then I used my secret laundry detergent that worked like a charm."

Bakura was getting bored listening to them as well. If this kid was gushing out blood like that, his mother had bigger problems than what detergent she should use.

"Bakura-san. Are you paying attention?" Ryou said loudly. "The first event is starting."

"Huh?" That jolted him right out of his stupor. "Yeah, yeah. I'm rolling."

The event was some kind of teamwork collaboration. The children were split into pairs, who then matched up with three other pairs to roll gigantic, inflated balls down the track. It looked rather ridiculous, but the kids looked like they were having fun.

"Go, go, go!" he heard himself roaring. "Don't let them get in front! Roll it there! _There_!" he screamed, pointing a shaking finger to wherever he wanted Kyouko and her teammate to run.

As the other events came and went, Bakura's voice began to get hoarse form his constant yelling. He had in fact been so loud that the neighboring parents had inched away from his vicinity, leaving Ryou the only person within a forty centimeter radius to him. Ryou was rather quiet throughout all the events; he clapped, but didn't call out for his daughter through the obstacle course or relay race.

Bakura thought that he was more into it than Ryou was.

"It's time for the lunch break!" a teacher called over her megaphone. "We will resume activities in one hour!"

Kyouko bound up to her may-or-may-not-be biological father and her outright fake uncle. "Are we eating now, Daddy?" she asked eagerly, squirming under the rope banister that barred the track from the on-lookers to sit on the blanket.

"Yes," Ryou said as he took out a towel to wipe her completely drenched forehead and neck. "Let Daddy tie your hair over," he continued briskly. "It's a mess."

"Okay." Kyouko sat up straight, wiggling around to plant herself in front of her father.

There really was no reason to continue taping this, but Bakura did it anyway. "Wave at the camera," he instructed roughly.

She beamed at Bakura. "Hi!" she called excitedly, waving her arm back and forth so quickly that the action looked like a blur. Bakura then slowly panned the view up to the man re-braiding the little girl's hair.

"You, too, Ryou."

Ryou gave him a look, a look that meant he probably wasn't going to do as asked. He continued to braid her hair in the same leisurely pace, and then neatly tied the ends with the multi-colored scrunchies.

"Fine, be like that," Bakura said. "I'ts all on tape anyway." He zoomed in for good measure. "Ha, you can't get away." Bakura pretended that he wasn't sounding like an idiot.

"It's time to eat," Ryou said calmly. "So put the camera down for one minute, would you, Bakura-san?" Kyouko clapped excitedly at his words "time to eat".

"I'll just tape a little bit more," Bakura defended. He panned the view down to the bag that Ryou had brought with him. "Let's see what's in there. Homemade cooking from the hardworking father..."

"I bought these."

"Store-bought cooking from the hardworking father..."

* * *

"Alright! Now to start the parent events!" the teacher with the megaphone announced cheerily. "Come on, parents! Mommies first for the big obstacle course!"

"They have events for the _parents_?" Bakura hissed. Ryou made a sound of nonchalance as various women picked their ways through the crowds to stand on the track.

Bakura wondered if Ryou felt odd that there was no mother for Kyouko to join the flanks now forming in front of the crowd. The other man simply continued picking up the empty bento boxes and packing them in the bag again, not even bothering to look up at the women crawling and skipping their way to the finish line as their children rooted for their parents. Kyouko joined in with the cheering, and Bakura wondered if she even knew what this was all for.

"And now, will the daddies come up for the tug-of-war competition!"

Ryou promptly stood up, so quickly that he almost knocked Bakura over in his haste.

"Go, Daddy!" Kyouko cried.

"Make us proud," Bakura sneered as he picked up the camcorder again. Ryou stared at him.

"Aren't you coming?"

"What?" Bakura slowly put his hand down. "Me, too?"

"Why not?"

'Because I'm not a father,' Bakura thought to himself. "Really? I can go?" he asked out loud.

"Go, ji-chan!" Kyouko cheered. Bakura shoved the camcorder into Kyouko's hands as he scrambled to his feet. After giving the four year old girl a crash course on how to operate the device, he quickly tailed Ryou to the front of the clearing.

"Okay! Will the fathers now split themselves into two groups?" Bakura followed Ryou to one end, and stood in front of the guy as the mass of men picked the heavy-duty rope up. Bakura held on to a part, testing the texture of the rope. It was prickly. And rough to the touch.

He wondered what Ryou felt about having gloves on at this moment.

"On your mark, get ready... Go!"

Bakura felt an immediate jerk pulling him forward. "What the hell?" he yelled. The men were in a sudden testosterone-inflamed uproar, each side trying to pull the rope in their side's direction. 'God _damn_. Do these people have to take this so seriously?' he thought to himself.

The cheer of the mothers and children were deafening.

Having Ryou behind him was making Bakura feel light-headed. Or maybe it was incoming heat stroke. Whatever it was, it was making the task before him even more difficult. He was suffering from rope burn, frustration, and possible heat stroke, but having Ryou there and working just as hard made it slightly better.

Bakura tugged the stupid rope with all his might, joining the roars of the other men up with him. Luck finally decided to rule in their favor, and the rope suddenly went lax within his hands.

"Aha!" Bakura screamed. "We _beat_ your asses!"

The men on his side 'oofed' and 'ugghed' when one smacked into the one behind him like dominoes as a result of the incredible powers of physics. Then luck decided to snatch back its hand from Bakura, or maybe it didn't, when Bakura, who was near the end of the line, was shoved back with full force. He accidentally backed up right into Ryou's front.

Ryou's heavy breathing on the back of his neck was making his soon-to-be heatstroke worse.

As all the families packed up to leave the school yard, Bakura made sure to busy himself helping Ryou fold the blanket and set everything back in order.

"Where are we going now, Daddy?"

"I don't wanna go back yet," Bakura interjected. "Let's eat out."

He really would have rather not gone back to Burger World to eat, but at least the place was quiet enough so that he could relax as he chewed on his hamburger. Kyouko was eagerly feeding Ryou French fries like a little kid would feed a pet believed to have a stomach with infinite capacity.

Bakura sat on the side opposite of the two, which he considered lucky. This way, no would could see that his hand was twitching under the table, trying hard not to pull out the camcorder in his bag and tape the two.

* * *

**Author's Note:** **YGOTAS**' _Slenderman_, the movie that "replaced" _Concrete Giraffes_... or so I think. I'm not too sure, the plot for that video didn't make a heck of a lot of sense to me. All I knew was that I was laughing really hard the entire time, and that my sister would get anoyed everytime I replayed it or said "hey, guys..." Right. The exact line "strange, tall man without a face" was spoken by Marik.

The famous "heart of the cards!" And the "Thief King" bit, too. The stuff about Bakura's research does NOT belong to me. I used various websites to gather information on haphephobia and its cures. The newspaper and banner are from the actual original **Yugioh!** manga, volume 2.


	13. Impulse

Bakura thought that what he was about to do was rather inappropriate.

That was saying something, especially since Youtai Bakura wasn't exactly what one would consider the 'model citizen.'

And because even an obnoxious bastard like Bakura thought that what he was about to do was inappropriate, he had to take precautions.

As the man leaned up to his living room windows, the ones that gave the world a glimpse into his home, he took another surveying glance to make sure that no one would be watching what he was about to do next. Satisfied that all the lights were out in the neighboring homes across the street, Bakura nodded to himself and yanked the curtains shut.

Nearly all the lights were out in his apartment, save the glow from his clunky television screen. He stared at it now, watching the DVD screen saver logo bob slowly across the sides of the lighted surface.

The disc sitting on his coffee table looked like a silver doughnut, with the light from the television bouncing off of it like that. Bakura guessed that he was getting sort of hungry.

But stuffing his face with a bag of cookies while watching what he was about to watch just might make the man feel monumentally worse about himself.

"To hell with it!" the man yelled out loud. He took a quick stride towards the DVD player, popped in the disc, and leapt back. When Bakura sat hunched on his couch to stare at the screen, he rummaged through the grocery bags next to him to take out a bag of chocolate cookies. He tore the bag open and grabbed a handful of the crumbly snack to throw into his mouth.

'_The date is August 22nd__, right?' _Bakura had to admit—he sounded kind of funny on camera. Maybe Ryou thought so, too, because the face Bakura was currently seeing on screen gave him an annoyed look.

'_Yes, Bakura-san.'_

'_Just checking. August 22__nd__, 20XX. We're at the Sunray…'_

'_—Sun_shine_ Nursery School, Bakura-san.' _The camera panned down to the lunches that Ryou was unpacking.

'_Right, right. For the… wait, what the hell is this called again?'_

'_Semi-Annual Athletic Competition. Honestly! Where the hell are you keeping your brain?'_

'_Remember that I'm taping this, Ryou.' _There was a sound of a finger tapping the side of the device. '_You don't want your kid to look back at this and see you being so mean to her good old ji-chan, do you?'_

Bakura chuckled through his cookies as the Ryou on screen gave the camera a dirty look.

'_So what are you doing now, Ryou?' _

'_Shouldn't you be filming Kyouko-chan?' _the man asked back. _'Isn't that why you're here?'_

There was a brief silence. Then the camera panned over to the children lining up in the schoolyard. After a moment, the screen went back to Ryou, who had a rare smile on his face as he waved lightly at the mob, supposedly to where his daughter was standing.

The Bakura eating his cookies and perched on his couch continued to watch the screen with unblinking eyes.

'_The _children_, Bakura-san,' _Bakura could hear the Ryou on his screen mutter through gritted teeth. '_Pay attention.' _The shot returned to the children doing their exercises.

After the video finished, Bakura felt the weight of the inappropriateness of watching the damn thing take over.

Then again, it wasn't like he had watched something X-rated, so one might wonder what was there to feel shamed about.

It was because watching that video was merely for Bakura's self-serving purposes. He _knew_ that this was bound to happen sooner or later.

Well, it happened a little later than expected.

Ever since attending Domino City's Sunshine Nursery School's semi-annual athletic competition, Bakura has had no choice to admit that lo and behold, something new was bothering him. In his defense, however, this problem was a dilemma Bakura could safely say he has never experienced before. This meant that this new thorn in his side didn't have to do with curiosity-sating, neighborly-high-blood-pressure-creating, family ties-tracing, family ties-_saving_, haphephobia-curing, or liver-eating guilt.

The only thing bothering him now was that… that was about all his work amounted to: a nearly twenty-five year old haphephobic-free piano teacher, his happy, four year old daughter, and… the neighbor, who moved down a floor in his apartment building.

He wasn't satisfied. But what _was_ his definition of satisfaction? It took a while for Bakura to think of a semi-suitable answer.

Seeing Kyouko Velcro herself to her father, and seeing her father accept it; that made him extremely satisfied. Having Ryou sometimes cook dinner for him when he visited; that was pretty nice, too.

…Was it a crime to say that he didn't really think that was enough anymore?

His conscience was not happy. 'What the hell do you want more than that? The end, fade out, roll credits!' it roared when Bakura first entertained the thought that he wanted to somehow venture further. The voice sounded solely like himself; the days of a whining and wheedling Yuugi-like conscience have long gone. 'Look at yourself! Can't you just be happy knowing that you helped Ryou and the kid? Isn't that what you said you were going to do?'

"I _am_ happy…" Bakura muttered in defense as he stared down at his empty bag of cookies, still perched on the couch seat with his arms hugging his knees. The screen saver on his television screen indicated otherwise.

It was just that he wasn't happy enough. That was why he was reduced to making a copy of the video on Kyouko's school event without telling Ryou.

He felt like a crucial part in this jigsaw puzzle was missing, and that it was up to him to fill in that gap.

…Maybe it'll help if he watched it again.

Bakura silently pushed the 'play' button again and watched the entire contents of the disc over.

'_And now, will the daddies come up for the tug-of-war competition!'_

The camera shook for a moment as Bakura tried to catch his balance when the Ryou on screen suddenly sprung up onto his feet.

'_Make us proud.' _Bakura could hear himself snicker.

On the screen, Ryou's face belied no expression. _'Aren't you coming?'_

Oddly, Bakura held his breath as he waited for the response, even though he remembered perfectly well how he had answered the other man.

'_What? Me, too?'_

'_Why not?' _

He dropped the bag he was holding in unexpected realization. He'll worry about the crumbs later— Bakura finally realized what he _wanted_.

_Inclusion._

Inclusion—not just being there as a shoddy therapist or a neighbor— Inclusion in the more intimate sense of the word.

The idea sounded foreign. An intrinsic part of him immediately wanted to reject it-It seemed too innocent, too soft-centered for a beer-guzzling, swearing man like Youtai Bakura.

It was just that Bakura had never tried being particularly friendly to anyone. It was a wonder that Marik and Bakura got along so well, and a curse that Yuugi latched on, too.

But were Bakura Ryou and Youtai Bakura friends?

They had been upstairs-neighbor and downstairs-neighbor, stalker and victim, next door-neighbor and next-door neighbor, and even therapist and patient, but it seemed that adding friend and friend so abruptly and haphazardly to the growing list of relationships was a bit uncanny.

But Bakura didn't think there was anything off about wanting to have a more pleasant relationship with the guy. And really, he already knew so much about the man's life—the parts Ryou finally agreed to share, at any rate—and he had told Ryou pretty much his own life story when they had their therapeutic massages.

"And Ryou probably treats everybody else except the kid the same way he treats me, right?" Bakura asked himself. "So I'm doing everyone a favor here."

He got up to get another bag of cookies.

* * *

Bakura waited patiently as the dial tone rang on. Finally, there was the clack of the receiver being raised from the cradle.

"_Bakura-san?" _Ryou's voice sounded flat, as always, when he acknowledged Bakura. It sounded even more so on the man's house phone.

"Hey, Ryou."

"_Yes?"_

"I'm on the train back now," Bakura stated as he toyed with a frayed strap of his bag on his lap.

"…_I don't see the point in calling me just to announce that."_

"… I just wanted to know what are you doing."

There was a long pause. Bakura set his completely fixed focus on the worn threads as he waited for a reply.

"_Why do you ask?"_

"I just want to get him to smile at me a bit more," Bakura muttered as his resolve started turning into a viscous puddle in his gut. His drying eyeballs weren't really helping. "That'll work for me."

Of course, he didn't tell Ryou that he thought he was a cold fish. Bakura wasn't that stupid.

"_Bakura-san?" _Bakura might not be stupid, but his absentmindedness was probably going to do him in sooner or later. _"Who are you talking about?"_

Shit. Bakura forgot he was still on the line.

"Nothing, nothing! I… I just wanted to talk."

"_Can't that wait? I'm making dinner right now."_

"Oh. Okay…"

"_Good-bye, then."_

"…Bye."

Well, now that Ryou has made it pretty clear that all talking tonight wasn't going to happen until Bakura actually reached 601, Bakura had nothing worthy to think about. His mind slowly began to drag its gaze on to the painfully short list of problems that dealt with himself and himself only. It was as pleasant as pulling teeth.

A hazy vow surfaced doing a particularly slow backstroke: Bakura could _sort_ of remember telling himself that he had to go find a girlfriend.

Unfortunately, he _couldn't_ sort of remember why he had told himself to do so.

The only reason that he had managed to salvage was the notion that he was spending too much time over at a certain man named Ryou's apartment. It seemed like all brain paths, no matter how convoluted they may be, all managed to trace back to Ryou. Apparently, according to this "finding-a-girlfriend" bit, that was a bad thing. Any time he _really_ tried to think about the origin of the reason why he had this thought in the first place, his mind went into one of those unfortunate and immediate lock-downs.

Hmm. Bakura supposed that it was his subconscious trying to block out less-than-desirable memories.

As Bakura ascended the steps leading up to ground level at Ginmaru Station, he continued to mull over his thoughts.

"If I get a girlfriend, then I won't be able to see Ryou and the kid as much," Bakura said out loud slowly.

Right. That was logic. The latter half of that thought was the reason why he told himself he needed the former.

"But I don't remember why I have to spend less time with them. And that's not my fault."

…Right, that was true as well.

"Besides, I have bigger fish to fry, right? I found a new problem I have to fix with Ryou…" He nodded to himself as he entered the lobby of his apartment building. "I'll just ditch the girlfriend idea. I could always come back to it if I remember the reason."

It sounded more like denial to a certain part in Bakura's mind, but he easily squashed that thought down.

"It's not _that_ unnatural. It's not that unnatural to like being around Ryou more. I mean, I bet I've talked more to Ryou than anybody else ever did. I look after his kid sometimes. That counts for something. " Bakura glared at the chrome finish of his apartment building's elevator as he made his argument to it. "…If I have to spend time with someone other than Ryou, but I can't find one, then I'd be by myself."

Bakura nodded to the "no smoking" sign. He knew what it was like to be alone. He rarely talked to people other than Yuugi or Marik in the latter half of his twenty-something years of existence, after all. He was used to it. He was used to it enough that he had learned one thing:

"I didn't like it."

After he started getting involved in Ryou's and Kyouko's lives, he realized that he really didn't want to be alone. This went much deeper than finding something to amuse himself, like he had previously thought a long time ago.

"Besides. I need to help Ryou," he told himself. "Ryou still needs my help."

When Bakura entered 601 for what felt like the umpteenth time, he began to get to work. The longer this job will take, the better.

* * *

It was just about a few days later when a new dilemma plopped down unceremoniously on Bakura's lap.

He was forgetting something. Not the reason why he allegedly needed a girlfriend; that ship has long sailed with neither a ceremonious farewell nor even crocodile tears.

No. This was something a lot more important, Bakura realized worriedly. The man was on his way for his routine trip to Ryou's apartment, but there was something not routine about his thoughts right now.

The man hurriedly patted down his person. He frowned. His phone and bag were on him. Bakura opened his bag. He didn't forget anything at work, either.

"What the hell…" Bakura muttered. There was definitely something he was forgetting. There was a deep scowl on his face as he exited the elevator. He rechecked his bag and pockets, and once again found that everything was accounted for.

It was starting to piss him off.

He walked up to 601 in a bit of a brooding storm, but then stopped right before ringing the bell. There was the sound of piano coming from inside. Ryou must have been playing at the moment.

Bad mood momentarily disappearing, he rang the doorbell. The piano music stopped, and footsteps could be heard heading toward the door. The door opened a second later, and the image of Ryou with a piano created a spark of possible recollection of whatever Bakura knew he was forgetting.

Ryou, piano. Ryou, piano, music. Ryou, piano, music, _con_—

"Ryou!" he suddenly yelled out with such panic that it pierced right over the echoing sounds from Kyouko's bath time singing. Ryou turned around from his path back to his piano.

"…What?" That same cool, nonchalant voice.

"That concert— Nanase Concert or whatever the hell it was— When is it?"

"In three days," Ryou answered matter-of-factly as he fluidly sat back down on his chair and calmly flipped a page over from the masses of paper neatly tacked up before him.

"_What_?" Bakura cried, dropping his bag on the floor. "How come you didn't tell me before?"

Ryou didn't even bother to turn around as he ordered his papers together. "I didn't think you'd be interested, so I neglected to tell you."

"You thought I _what_? I got to go to your kid's field day!" he said, as if that was supposed to prove something.

"Yes, Kyouko-chan wanted you _specifically _to go there, and I understand that you wanted to attend," Ryou replied patiently. "But my performance has nothing to do with her. Why are you so interested in going?"

"Because—because—" Bakura sputtered, stumped for an explanation. And when Bakura got stumped, he got angry. "I can't believe you didn't invite me!" he yelled finally, his tone sounding more hurt than he would have preferred.

Bakura should have known that Ryou probably meant exactly what he was saying, and that he probably meant no ill will towards Bakura about this whole thing. After all, this was what Bakura was supposed to be here for: helping Ryou be a little more friendly, a little more mindful of everybody's feelings.

But that didn't stop the man from getting angry. Bakura could only respond to the words coming out of Ryou's mouth, and not the reasoning behind it.

Ryou slowly looked up at the seething man with a strange expression. "It'll take two days to get there, perform, and get back the following morning. Kyouko-chan's field day happened to be on a day when you didn't have work," he pointed out simply.

"So?"

"Would you be allowed to take the days off?" Ryou asked mildly. "You told me before that your employer was strict about absences."

Bakura froze. Ryou was right. Kaiba would have him skinned alive and mounted in the lobby as an example to all the other workers if he played hooky. "I don't care!" he snapped, crossing his arms defensively. "I'll talk to him about it, but that has nothing to do with you not inviting me to go in the first place!" he spat with illogical acidity.

Ryou blinked at him, and then resumed staring at him with an enigmatic expression. "If you're cleared, then you may come with Kyouko-chan and I if you'd like."

"That's not saying sorry." Bakura wasn't really demanding an apology. Something told him that those words of Ryou's were probably the closest he was going to get to an invitation, but he said it anyway.

"…It's not." Ryou began to resume playing. Then he paused, and the man dropped his gloved hands onto his lap. For a moment, Ryou sincerely looked like he was going to apologize. But then he said: "You can get really bothersome sometimes."

That caught him completely off guard. What was a slightly riled up fight made in jest suddenly turned a lot uglier.

Bakura could feel his face grow hot as he dug his fingernails into the bed of his inner palms. Ryou continued watching his expression, with nothing reflective of possible thoughts on his own face. Maybe he wasn't thinking anything was wrong.

The plead that Bakura really shouldn't be taking that jibe so seriously was completely wiped out. Were it anybody else who had said that to him, Bakura would have started flipping over tables and kicking walls while cursing really loudly. With Ryou, he should have been the bigger person and patiently absorbed the sharp words.

Yet, he could only feel… upset.

"Ji-chan! Ji-chan! Ji-chan!" Kyouko had suddenly and conveniently bounded out of the bathroom. She screeched to a halt and peered up at him with slightly fogged glasses. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," Bakura automatically snapped, trying to look away.

Kyouko pressed on, which wasn't exactly working wonders on keeping Ryou uninformed about the current tense atmosphere. Twisting her head from side to side, Kyouko seemed quite intent on looking square at Bakura's face. "Yes, there is!" She turned to Ryou. "Daddy! Ji-chan looks sad! Help him!"

The kid was making it worse. Kyouko was drawing way too much attention to Bakura's face, which was what the man was desperately trying to hide. There was a new misty fog of shame settling over Bakura's line of vision, and _why the hell was it so embarrassing to be standing here all of a sudden_?

Is that what Ryou thought? That he was fucking "_bothersome_?"

He didn't know what kind of face he must have been making for Kyouko to suddenly waver out "_Daddy_!" in such an angry tone, but if Bakura had been looking, he would have realized a flicker flit across in the other man's eyes.

"…Please come to the concert with us, Bakura-san. I'm sorry for not inviting you earlier."

"Daddy! Are you asking ji-chan to go _now_?" Kyouko sounded scandalized. "How come you didn't ask ji-chan before?" she demanded.

Bakura didn't know if laughing at this moment would have been a good response. The heavy feeling on his chest had dissipated some, but Bakura wasn't sure if he would have been able to even if he wanted to laugh out loud.

"…It must have slipped my mind," Ryou said mildly, returning his line of sight to his sheet music.

"Don't do that, Daddy! You'll hurt ji-chan's feelings." Kyouko puffed out her chest in importance.

"Yes. I'm sorry," Ryou repeated flatly, though he didn't turn around again.

Kyouko looked up eagerly, yanking on the hem of Bakura's shirt. "You're gonna sit next to me when we get there, right? It's a big, scary audi—audi—"

"Auditorium," Bakura muttered, his voice a little more hoarse than usual.

"Yeah! What ji-chan said! So I need ji-chan to sit with me!"

"Humph."

Bakura avoided looking at Ryou and pressed a lot harder than usual on his pencils as he drew his daily sketch for Kyouko that night. Kyouko's attention span was too short to dwell on Bakura and continually check up on him. She spent a great deal of energy talking with Ryou instead.

Bakura thought that it was rather unfair that Ryou would speak only to Kyouko with such a soft and patient tone.

How come _he_ never got anything like that?

His mood was quickly souring into a mass with a hint of resentment again, and he scowled.

"On Daddy's birthday, are you going to have a big party, Daddy?"

"No… Maybe a small one."

"With just me and ji-chan?"

Bakura's looked up in sudden and inexplicable interest. Kyouko was bouncing up and down on Ryou's lap, and didn't happen to notice Ryou's winces of subtle pain every time she heaved her entire weight onto the man's thin thighs.

Bakura watched as Ryou stared into Kyouko's bright eyes as he paused. "…Of course," the man finally said.

"Okay!" Kyouko shouted cheerily. "Just the…" Kyouko began counting fingers. "The three of us, then!"

"Just the three of us, huh?" Bakura muttered to himself as he hunched back down to finish his drawing… That made him feel slightly better.

"Would you like a portion to be set aside for just the two of us?" Ryou asked softly.

Bakura scowled again. 'Damn Ryou and all his fucking favoritism—' he muttered to himself.

"Bakura-san."

"What?" he snapped.

"I was asking you a question."

"What question?" Ryou hadn't directed a single word at him for the past two hours.

Ryou was quickly losing his patience at him, Bakura knew. Well, the bloody man could go to hell for all he cared—

"I asked you if you would like for me to set aside part of the day for ourselves."

"…Me?" Bakura froze, then gave his head a slight shake and sat up straighter. "You mean me?"

Ryou nodded slowly in his usual Ryou-like, condescending way. "Yes."

"…Why?"

A relatively new part of his mind face-palmed. 'No, no, no! Don't _question_ him! Accept! _Accept_, you hear?'

"I have yet to properly thank you for all you've done for me. We… should celebrate."

Bakura was feeling cynical. "Why?" he grumbled, dragging his pencil over the paper in ragged strokes. "You don't have to take time out of your own birthday to do that. We could do that anytime."

There was another pause. "I supposed that's true. Never mind—"

Warning bells flashed. "I never said I didn't want to do it!" Bakura hastily amended as he whirled his head up to look at Ryou. "I want in!"

Ryou was giving him a rare smile. Bakura could feel himself flush at the childishness of his reaction and stiffly looked away in embarrassment again.

After a moment of waiting silence, Bakura had no choice but to speak up again. "Well? What the hell do you want to do then?"

The smile was still there. "Nothing illegal, that's all."

Bakura could feel himself grinning now, too, and it was as if all that negativity in the room had been blocked out. "Damn it."

Ryou made a surprising sound of mirth at the response. Bakura's grin grew wider to measure up to the swelling feeling of pride for having made the man laugh.

"How about a late dinner out?" he suggested.

"A dinner out?" Bakura made a slight face at that, his bad mood entirely gone. "I'll tell you now that I'm not a fan of those classy ones," he warned. He had had enough of those starchy and stuffy dinners during childhood. "Their food don't agree with me."

"You may choose the restaurant if you prefer," Ryou said, unusually gracious.

"…Don't blame me if I choose a grubbier one."

"I won't. It's my thanks to you. Wherever you choose, we'll go there."

"Well, you said so," Bakura cautioned with a stupid smile on his face and a pointing finger wagging to make sure Ryou kept his vow. "Don't you go back on your word. You're promising me a night out. On your birthday."

"I promise you a night out on my birthday," Ryou agreed.

Bakura smiled.

* * *

This was it.

Bakura muttered a quick thanks to the young woman behind the secretary desk and stepped up to the frosted glass door. The metal plate with the words "Kaiba Seto, CEO" emblazoned on it glared back at him.

From inside, Bakura could hear his boss' voice, and luckily, the latter didn't sound angry. There was another voice in there, too, and it appeared as if Kaiba and this unknown person were in the middle of a shouting match.

…Maybe this wasn't such a good idea. Bakura was running out of time, though, and so he quickly knocked, and went in.

"Quit your stalling, Yuugi, or you will forfeit the match!"

"_Mutou_?" Bakura sputtered.

In front of him were his boss and his colleague. The two were sitting across from each other at Kaiba's desk—a desk that probably costed more than Bakura's paycheck— _dueling_.

They were actually dueling. Not with actual cards, though, on account that the cards weren't even off the final drawing board yet. It appeared that the two were using photocopies of the designs the graphics team had been creating.

'Holy _fuck_, Mutou actually up and did it. He _actually_ challenged Kaiba to a game!' Bakura thought in horror as he felt all the color drain from his face.

"I never forfeit!" Yuugi exclaimed, too in tune with the game to notice Bakura there.

The shock of Yuugi not acknowledging Bakura's presence was so extreme that Bakura was sure a dead man probably just rolled over in his grave.

"…Boss?"

"What?" Kaiba shouted, not bothering to look up from the game at hand. "Who the fuck is it?"

"It's Youtai Bakura. Uh, look, I wanted to tell you directly that I'd like to take a couple of days off to add to my rest day tomorrow."

"Fine! Now get the hell out of my office!" Kaiba yelled, waving his arm in Bakura's direction to shoo him away.

"…Really?" Bakura was taken back by the affirmation. "No, I'm asking you if I could take a couple of days off—"

"I told you '_fine_'! Don't you see I'm busy? Get out of here!" the CEO bellowed, waving his arm haphazardly.

"Wait a minute! Did you just summon a bunch of monsters in one turn?" Yuugi cried, pointing accusingly to the index card sized papers before them.

"Yeah, so?"

"That's against the rules, isn't it?"

"Screw the rules, I _made_ this game!"

Bakura left quickly to avoid being collateral damage.

* * *

Now that that was over with, there will still loose ends that Bakura had to tie up, thanks to the wonderful and timely late notice Ryou had given him about this whole thing.

Yet, Bakura found that he couldn't stay mad at the man for long.

…Anyway.

The hall in which the concert was being held was a far distance from Domino City. Ryou was still in the process of purchasing a new car, which left the three with the only other option of limited train service. Service ended before the concert does, which was the reason for the multiple day break.

Bakura had a few questions about this whole set up: Ryou had made preparations and rented a room at a nearby hotel a while back, intending to share with Kyouko.

Throwing Bakura into the works was messing with the gears.

"Hell! I can't afford a room with no reservation!" Bakura complained. The trip was scheduled two days from now, and there was no way that the man could muster up enough money to pay for the astronomical price for a room on such short notice.

"Then you'll bed in the one under my name," Ryou replied easily as he continued to pack.

It took a moment for Bakura to understand his words. "What? I can't do that! Sharing a room with _you… _two?"

"We don't bite, ji-chan! You'll be safe with us!" Kyouko was over herself in the excitement of an impending trip.

"I'll just share a bed with Kyouko instead," Ryou said patiently. "You'll have one to yourself." Bakura caught Ryou rolling his eyes in exasperation when he thought he wasn't looking.

"Daddy! Daddy! Remember to pack my dress!"

"Of course."

"What dress?" Bakura asked suspiciously. "Why do you need to pack a dress?"

"I have to look pretty for Daddy!" Kyouko exclaimed. "You, too, ji-chan! You have to look pre—umm, handsome!"

One would think that a young man with affluent upbringing would own at least one suit. That was the case, for a while. Somewhere between leaving the world of private boarding school and entering the world of video game designing, though, Bakura ditched all kinds of formal wear and became accustomed to the much more comfortable jeans and work boots.

Hence, the 'hobo-outfit.'

Bakura was too ashamed to tell Ryou he didn't have a suit. He wasn't really sure why. Probably because Ryou would think he was childish and an all-around slob. Ryou probably already thought that. But Bakura really didn't want him to say so in front of Kyouko. Which was why he set out the next day to go hunting for one.

He needed to look at least semi-presentable for Ryou.

Luck was good to him. He had exactly one day. Tick-tock.

As he exited the train station that led up to the department store plaza, though, Bakura wondered why he got caught in these things in the first place as he began to brave the stores all by his lonesome. After paying for a pair of shoes he would probably never wear again after the concert, Bakura continued walking aimlessly around the plaza.

"Maybe it would've been a good idea to bring someone along," he thought to himself. Then the thought of either the manic, flitting Yuugi or the flamboyant, vain Marik accompanying him crossed the man's mind.

He shivered at the idea, and immediately perished the thought.

"Oh, my god! Oh, my god! Oh, my _god_!"

Bakura froze in mid-step. Sweat slowly began to trickle down the side of his forehead.

…It…It couldn't be.

"It's Youtai-kun!" Yuugi shouted unnecessarily loudly and joyously as he ran up to Bakura from where he was standing before, approximately thirty meters away. "Youtai-kun! I can't believe we found each other here!"

Bakura tried to muster a smile. It turned into a very forced and pained grimace. "Yeah. Me, too, Mutou. Me, too," he gritted out.

"Buying clothes here? What happened to the good ol' Hobo Outfit we know and love, Youtai-kun?"

"Look, just leave me alone. I need to—"

"Well, well, well! Is that _you_ I see standing over there, Bakura?"

That voice. That sing-song, odd voice.

"…Hello, Marik."

There was silence as the two, newly-met acquaintances of Bakura stared at each other.

"Who's this?" they both demanded, whirling their heads to face Bakura while simultaneously pointing at the other.

"Marik, this is Mutou. Mutou Yuugi. He's my coworker at Kaiba Corp," Bakura managed to grit out. "Mutou, Ishtar Marik. He's an old classmate."

Both of them made a slight sound of contempt to each other.

'Oh, fuck. I need to get out of here,' Bakura thought as the tendrils of a headache began to lick at the back of his mind. "Great. Introductions made, right?" Bakura asked out loud as he looked from one man to the other, clapping his hands together with a note of finality. "I'm leaving—" he announced as he turned around to get out of there.

"Hold on!" Marik and Yuugi grabbed onto a shoulder each.

"You haven't told me what you're doing here, Youtai-kun!" Yuugi reminded sweetly.

"You haven't even asked me what _I'm_ doing here!" Marik pointed out just as haughtily.

Bakura inhaled and exhaled deeply, fingers wrapping tightly over the handles of the bag the shoe store had given him. He turned to his colleague deliberately. "I'm… buying some shoes for my brother. It's his birthday coming up," he fibbed badly. Yuugi nodded enthusiastically at the answer. Then Bakura turned to Marik with a slow and pained twist of his neck. "And Marik, pray _tell _me why you're here."

"Oh! I'm so flattered that you asked, Bakura!" Marik said, flipping his hair back smugly. "I'm going to get a new watch. I think I lost my old one."

"…Not in a patient, I hope," Bakura muttered.

Marik was unusually quiet as he examined some lint on the shoulder of his customary, revealing outfit.

There was a brief silence.

"I'm going to go now," Bakura repeated. He made a quick getaway and managed to go so far as perhaps three meters until he heard Yuugi wonder out loud:

"I didn't know Youtai-kun had a brother…"

There was another short pause. Then Marik said, "He doesn't. He just has three older sisters."

'Shit!' Bakura cursed to himself as he slowly turned his head around. Marik and Yuugi were staring at him. Bakura gasped and quickly whirled his head back around and began to walk away faster.

"We've been had!" Yuugi cried.

Bakura groaned as the two of them pushed him down on a bench in the shoe store.

"Hey! Why did you lie to me?" Yuugi demanded.

"Yeah, Bakura. Lying to _me as well_? That's a first. Don't try to bullcrap a bullcrapper," Marik warned, flicking his hair back with a hand again.

"So tell me the truth!" Yuugi ordered. "What are you doing here?"

"It's not of your business, Mutou!"

"Then tell _me_, Bakura!"

Bakura was astounded by the absurdity of this conversation. "What? _No_!"

"Tell me!"

"Tell _me_!"

Bakura couldn't stand the noise. He caved. "Alright! _Alright!_ I'll fucking say it! Shit!" Bakura bellowed, tugging at his hair in utter frustration.

"Well?"

"I need to buy some clothes because…"

"You're going on a date?" Yuugi proposed.

"No."

"You're going to a wedding?" Marik suggested.

"No!"

"You're _having_ a wedding?"

"For the last fucking time, no!"

"Well, how were we supposed to know that?"

"I'm going to a concert tomorrow out of Domino City and I just need to buy something to wear there!"

Yuugi and Marik kept their silence for approximately three seconds.

"What? How come you never told me about this, Youtai-kun?" Yuugi asked in a faux-hurt, wavering tone.

"Oh, shut the hell up, Mutou."

"Good _god_, Bakura! It's shopping—You should have invited me. I'll make you more gorgeous than you already are."

"Hell, no, Marik. Don't you get involved—" Marik might be a good person to talk to because he never asked too many questions, but when it came to physical appearance, the man could be just as bad as Yuugi on a regular basis.

That scared Bakura.

"You don't know what you're saying. I'm prepared to sacrifice my time to help you, Bakura. Shouldn't you be grateful?"

"Hey! I'm going to help Youtai-kun!" Yuugi interjected. "He's my partner at work!"

"Bull_crap_! I've known Bakura longer than you've probably been alive, squirt, so _back off_!"

Bakura tried to take this absurd bantering as an opportunity to leave.

Two accusing fingers pointed at him. "You wait right here!" the pair yelled.

Moments later, Bakura could be seen walking miserably down the gigantic plaza's hall sandwiched in between a meeting made in hell.

"It's really hot here," Bakura muttered, trying to breathe despite the close proximity of his two associates.

"Is it? Maybe I should leave, then," Marik suggested, proudly puffing out his chest.

"Yes, maybe you should," Bakura muttered.

Marik went right over the true meaning of those words. "So what kind of concert is this, Bakura? Are we going for a completely casual look? Sporty casual? Preppy— oh, no, that doesn't look good with that electrocuted lion's mane of your's— Formal, perhaps? You're presentable enough in a tie, I suppose—"

"Hey, I wanna help!" a voice on the other side of Bakura complained.

"Hush, child. The grownups are talking."

"Grownups?" Yuugi cried indignantly. "I'm twenty two years old!" Yuugi tried to get Bakura's attention by tugging on the sleeve he was closest to. "As I was saying before," he said loudly, "I can help you, Youtai-kun! I have an eye for colors!"

Marik let out a snort of disbelief. "Your hair color choice says otherwise," he said snootily. "Don't you agree, Bakura?"

"Don't drag me into the water with you, Marik," Bakura warned.

"Hey! I'm standing right here, you know! How dumb do you think I am?"

"You don't really want me to answer that," Marik sneered.

"I'm about to go insane here—" Bakura notified the two in vain.

"Hey! Now there's a promising looking store!" Marik suddenly blurted out excitedly. "Come along, Bakura. Your devilish handsomeness won't last forever." He began to pull Bakura towards the place in question's direction.

"No, no, no!" Yuugi cried in panic. "This way, Youtai-kun! Go to _this_ one!" Yuugi began to tug the man to go in the opposite direction.

"Either of you drag me one more inch," Bakura seethed through clenched teeth, "and watch what happens. I mean it, just _watch_."

The trio ended up in several department stores, and it seemed that whatever one end would pick up, the other would be able to make a whole debate on it.

"A trench coat!" Yuugi yelled as he held out a long tan coat.

"What the hell am I going to do with a trench coat?" Bakura began.

"Absolutely no trench coat!" Marik objected with disdain. "You'll make Bakura look like an eff-ing flasher if he wears that! Do you want him to get arrested for something like indecent exposure?"

"Oh, I'm sure that you must have experience with that," Yuugi jibed.

"You little twerp!" Marik gasped. "I say that Bakura should buy this fedora—" he said, holding up the fancy hat that was mounted on a rack neaby.

"What the hell am I going to do with a hat?" Bakura droned on wearily.

"A fedora? If Bakura wears that, he'll look like a pimp! Why don't you just go all out and get the cane and gloves, too?"

"Just because _some _people can't manage to fit a hat onto their spiky head doesn't mean others can't—"

Bakura promptly grabbed whatever was in arms-length distance. "I'm getting this!" he bellowed as he held the simple red shirt and the pair of black trousers close to him.

They stared. "That one?" they began in unison.

"What? What the fuck is wrong with this one?"

"The color is so bright!" Yuugi cried.

"_You're_ telling_ me _what's bright?" Bakura shouted.

"You'll look like a male prostitute!" Marik complained.

"_You're_ not the one to talk here, Marik!"

Moments later, Bakura walked out of the fitting room dressed in the sole potential candidate, the only fruits of the man's several hour long toil.

Yuugi and Marik hemmed and hawed, but neither approved nor disapproved it.

"Well, what?" Bakura demanded, holding out his arms expectantly as he waited impatiently for a response. "Well? Say something, damn it! You two are so great at it normally!"

"It'll do," Marik said dismissively, flicking his hair over his shoulder again.

"Now we have to find a tie!" Yuugi exclaimed. "I know the perfect one."

"Like _hell _you do! _I'll _find Bakura the perfect tie!"

Bakura let out a pained sound.

* * *

Shortly after Yuugi left, Marik accompanied Bakura out of the plaza's doors.

"So…" Marik slid an arm over Bakura's shoulder. "I suppose that you're doing all of this for a romantic interest, Bakura?"

"_What_?" Bakura spluttered, heaving the arm off with a swat of his hand. "What the hell gave you that idea?"

"Oh, come on, Bakura. No one just goes and buy a suit for a concert for no one to see. Who's the woman?"

"It's not for a woman!"

"A man, then?"

"You're getting more ridiculous by the minute."

"I won't hate you any less if you were gay, Bakura," Marik said matter-of-factly. "In fact, I've always said 'if you're too straight, you'll snap', you know."

"…I've never heard of that in my life."

"Whatever. Oh! Hold on." Marik opened up the tiny leather knapsack he was carrying with him. "Just in case you're lying about the love interest thing…" The tanned man motioned for Bakura to hold out his hand, which the latter did, albeit very cautiously. "Here."

Bakura's eyes widened in terror at the small pile of condoms Marik had given him. "What?"

"Is it not enough? I have more, if you'd like—"

"_No_! I mean what the hell is _this_?" the man shouted, pinching a corner of one of the square packets and waving it sharply in front of Marik's face.

"Protection, Bakura! Don't tell me you don't know how to use them. You put it over your—or his, if it's a man we're talking about here—or both—Anyway—"

"Shut up!" Bakura hissed, his face turning his classic beet-shade as he pushed the packets back into Marik's hand. "I don't want—I don't _need_— these things, alright?"

Marik tapped his chin in thought. "So you're planning on being a dad soon? Or are you sure both of you are clean—"

"Wrong! All _wrong_! I'm not going to do _anything_ with him that will require these—_these_—Why do you even have these things _on_ you?"

"They're called condoms, Bakura. And hey, I'm a doctor, remember? Of course I need to carry these around."

"They're not fucking _band-aids_!"

"It doesn't matter." Marik firmly pushed them back into his hand. "Just take them. You never know." He winked. "It might happen."

There was a thankful block caused by Bakura's headache that plugged any imaginative thoughts from manifesting. "No!" he said again simply in horror.

"Freaking, freaking do it, Bakura!" Marik shouted loudly, his voice ringing over the busy street in which Bakura would take his train ride home.

Bakura caved again. "Fine! Fine, I'll take them!" He haphazardly stuffed down the back pocket of his jeans. "Happy?"

"Don't put them there! They'll melt if they're so close to body temperature long term—"

Bakura didn't really know to what his extent he trusted for the man anymore, but snarled and threw them into one of his bags instead. Just as he was about to turn to walk down the steps to the station, Marik held him back again.

"Wait, wait, wait!"

"Why? Can't you let me live in peace?" Bakura asked exasperatedly, throwing his arms up in the air.

"Just one little question!"

Bakura sighed. He figured he owed Marik at least that much. "Make it fast."

"So it's a _man_, you said—"

"Goodbye, Marik."

Bakura spent that night packing. It wasn't really a lot to pack, seeing that the trip was only a night and a morning long. Besides, the hotel would accommodate for most of the necessities. After tossing in a toothbrush, some toothpaste, and a change of clothes, however, Bakura had the impression that something very essential was missing.

He looked around his tiny bedroom in hopes of triggering a clue as to what it was. His eyes landed on one of his sketchpads. After a moment's thought, he threw that in as well. The nagging feeling immediately vanished.

Then the man crawled over to his new purchases and carefully took out the wrapped shirt. A couple of the condoms that Marik had so generously given him fell on the floor in the movement.

He tried to remember why the man had even given him them.

Suddenly remembering, Bakura quickly grabbed all of them, got onto his feet, and chucked them in a dresser drawer before looking around to make sure no one had seen.

No one had.

Good. Very good.

* * *

The four hour train ride out of Domino City was uncomfortable, to say the least. After arriving to the hotel to drop off the luggage, Bakura felt sore all over, thereby leading to a cloudy mood. It was a nice enough room, he supposed. He was a little wary about touching everything in such a nicely furnished place, used to the threadbare decorations in his own home instead.

He didn't have much of an appetite for dinner. It was much more early than Bakura had grown accustomed to, and it was in one of those god-forsaken classy Western places nearby Nanase Hall. He spent a lot of time scowling and picking at the meat chunks swimming in the gravy.

When Kyouko started doing the same thing, Ryou began to chastise the both of them.

What a lovely way to start everything off.

Bakura was already tired and crabby by the time they returned to the hotel, though the contagious excitement Kyouko had for the event helped wane off some of the moodiness.

"Get changed, Kyouko-chan," Ryou called from the bathroom. "Did you help Daddy take out your dress yet?"

"Not yet! I'll look for it now, Daddy!"

Ryou walked back outside to address the still hungry and still tired Bakura. "We have to leave in thirty minutes to get there on time, Bakura-san. Hurry up."

Bakura looked up to acknowledge him. He would have guessed that the other man could pull off the formal-attire look better than he could, especially since button-ups and trousers seemed to be the only thing the guy would wear. That didn't stop Bakura from being dreadfully aware that he was far from being on par, though.

Ryou looked down at his suit jacket and shirt. "What are you looking at?" he questioned as he slipped a tie over his neck.

Bakura directed his attention to the silver-striped fabric the man was expertly and nimbly tying.

"I don't like the gray color," Bakura blurted out as he pointed at his shirt.

"…What?"

"It makes you look washed out. You should find something a little brighter."

A side of Ryou's mouth twitched up. "Oh?"

"Yeah. Go for blue next time."

The smile grew more pronounced. "Anything else?"

"I like… your tie. Like the touch with the dimple under that top triangle thing," he said, knowing that he sounded rather witless. "…Makes it look professional."

Ryou raised an eyebrow, and examined the supposedly expert touch. "Thank you."

"Found it! Help me with my buttons, Daddy," Kyouko pleaded as she shook off the transparent bag that held her dress in one hand while tugging at her current shirt's plastic fasteners with the other. It was a different dress than the one that she had worn when the three had had dinner out in Domino City all that time ago.

Of course Ryou would have gone through so much work just to please a little girl and buy another new dress for her.

Ryou quickly rushed over to prevent Kyouko from popping off a button in excitement. "Why don't you put the bag on the bed first, Kyouko-chan—"

Bakura unzipped his own bag to take out his clothes, looking silently down at them.

"Okay, okay. I got it, Daddy. You wait here! I'm going to the bathroom to change so that I could surprise you and ji-chan!" She rushed off and shut the door behind her.

Bakura blinked and snorted. "Didn't you buy her that dress in the first place?" he questioned as he carefully took out the cleanly pressed shirt to prevent putting any unnecessary wrinkles in it.

"Let children have their fun," Ryou replied dismissively as he glanced down at his watch. He turned to Bakura. "Fifteen minutes left. Start dressing or we'll be late."

"Your kid's in the bathroom right now, though."

Ryou furrowed his eyebrows. "Why can't you just change here? You don't need the bathroom," Ryou said, as if it was obvious.

Well, it sort of was.

"We're both men. You certainly shouldn't have anything to hide."

"What? I don't!"

"Then hurry it up." Ryou sat down sinuously on Bakura's bed, one leg crossed rather elegantly over the other. He leaned back on an arm in an unusual display of relaxation, his eyes never leaving Bakura's.

Bakura wondered if Ryou was playing some sick, cosmic joke on him. But then, it didn't really seem in his nature to do that.

"Could you…" Bakura wanted to finish saying 'could you turn around.' But for some odd reason, the words didn't leave his throat.

"Yes?"

Bakura certainly could have said it; the words were almost done taking their sweet time coming out of his mouth. Hell, he could have decided for Kyouko to finish using the bathroom and change then. But he did neither.

It was all rather bizarre.

Ryou continued to sit there as if nothing was amiss as Bakura self-consciously took out his tie and trousers and laid them on Ryou's bed.

He really had no reason to turn around, so he didn't as he quickly shucked off his long sleeved top and unbuttoned the dress shirt with great difficulty. He should have unbuttoned it first before taking off his regular top, because he had the paranoid feeling that Ryou's eyes were on him.

He finally managed to yank it on, the fabric of which provided some cooling relief to his burning skin. He buttoned it quickly.

Now for the hard part.

It wasn't like he had never undressed in front of someone before. He had done it in school for physical education class plenty of times. It was just that no one ever watched him.

Was Ryou still watching him? Bakura didn't want to satisfy his paranoia by looking up.

If he didn't pay any attention to Marik's and Yuugi's words before, undressing in front of Ryou like this certainly made him feel like a male prostitute now—

'Oh, why the _fuck_ did I have to remember that now?' Bakura thought to himself.

If anything, now would have been a perfectly appropriate time to turn around. Nearly acceptable.

Maybe.

Bakura steeled his resolve and very slowly undid the button on his jeans and pulled the zipper down.

Maybe not.

The atmosphere had just went from "rather bizarre" to "just bizarre."

Off with one leg, then the other. Chuck to one side. Glad that he had decided to wear plain black boxers that day. Grab and unfold. In with one leg, then the other. Zip and button. Done!

Bakura was proud of himself. 'That wasn't so bad,' he thought as he lifted his head.

Ryou _had_ been staring at him.

"…What?" What a stupid thing to utter. It was, however, the perfect thing to say when one didn't know what else to choke out.

"Red's a nice color on you," Ryou remarked, nodding at Bakura's shirt.

"Really? You don't think it's too bright?" Bakura pondered, recalling Yuugi's horrified exclamation when he chose it.

"No. It matches your eyes."

"I'm done, Daddy! Ji-chan!" Kyouko called as she cleared the space from the bathroom to the bedroom in one leap. "See?" she pointed out excitedly as she held out the sides of her puffy dress for them to admire.

"It's beautiful, Kyouko-chan," Ryou expectedly praised.

"It's great," Bakura added, secretly glad for the interruption as he put on his tie.

* * *

The hall was huge. Huge and fancy. Bakura already felt out of place.

Ryou promptly left them after they reached the auditorium, leaving the two to sit in the sprawl of seats that seemed to stretch from one side of the earth to the other.

"Hell, who the fuck can be that good that so many people would come to watch?" Bakura grumbled to himself as he and the little girl sat down. The rest of the seats were quickly and slowly filling up with various, snobby-and-rich-folk-looking people.

He grabbed a program to leaf through and poked the girl with his elbow when he found what he was looking for. "There's your dad," he pointed out loudly as he tapped at the paper.

It wasn't wrong to feel a little proud, right?

After the customary boring introductions from the master of ceremony and all the affluent, powerful individuals who had found it worthy enough to "work together and make this concert successful," all the unimportant people left the stage.

Kyouko cooed as the lights dimmed.

Bakura didn't care about the lights. There were at least three performances to go before Ryou would appear on stage for his solo. He sat there, bored, as other performers came and went. By the third one, he had even stopped clapping though Kyouko applauded as loud as her tiny palms could hit each other.

And then he appeared. Kyouko tugged on Bakura's arm excitedly as she let out a happy squeal when Ryou slowly entered the stage from the side. The man bowed to the audience with one fluid movement and sat down in front of the piano at the side of the stage.

Ryou was wearing white gloves. Bakura grinned. It would have looked incredibly cheesy on anyone else, but somehow, just somehow, Ryou managed to get the look right.

A few familiar bars began to play from the same song Ryou had sampled for him shortly after the former's arm had completely healed.

Of course it was beautiful; Ryou was the pianist, after all. Kyouko kept a tight grip on Bakura's arm throughout most of the piece, squeezing especially tightly at the segments in which Ryou would gracefully pick up the tempo.

Bakura would have tried to pry her fingers off because that clench was doing a pretty awful number on his shirt, but he decided to let her hand stay there.

He was too busy staring at Ryou's face as he played to pay too much attention to anything else. After all, he had heard the music before— when Ryou had played it for him privately. Maybe that was the reason why he wasn't as into the music as he would have been if this was the first time he had heard Ryou play this song.

Ryou's expression looked familiar. Bakura struggled to remember where he had seen it before. He didn't look like this when he had first played the piece for Bakura.

It was one of complete relaxation…

"…_Mmm… You're quite talented, Bakura. It feels very good." _The echo of a husky version of Ryou's voice whispered into Bakura's ear. The ghost-like sensation of Ryou's fingers lightly sliding against Bakura's wrist appeared as well.

What had happened after Ryou had said that?

The tiny recess in which Bakura had stored the answer broke free.

Bakura had ran out of 601 because he had gotten… aroused.

Bakura's breath caught in his throat at the unexpected revival of the dark memory. All the blood seemed to drain from his face and upper body now to flood down south. Too south. Far too south.

"No. Not here. Calm down. Calm the _fuck_ down," Bakura growled to himself, clenching his palms over the armrests.

He could barely hear Kyouko calling him. Her round glasses, which seemed to reflect the shine from the suspended lighting above them, made him dizzy as she peered up to look at him. "Ji-chan? Are you talking to yourself?"

"…No. J-just keep watching your dad. Nothing's wrong," Bakura managed, forcing himself to stare ahead. "Nothing's wrong," he repeated.

* * *

"It was so pretty, Daddy!" Kyouko exclaimed when the small family was reunited after the concert. She swung Ryou's arm like a pendulum back and forth, squeezing her small fingers around his palm. "Wasn't it, ji-chan?"

"Yeah. It was really nice."

There had been sufficient time after Ryou had left the stage and the rest of the performers had gone on for Bakura to will down everything—which was really nothing, as he had told himself—that had gone wrong with himself while Ryou was playing.

He had dutifully stayed in his seat for the entire segment despite protests from one panic-riddled, anxiety-stricken side of him. Bakura didn't know how he managed to cope without scoffing down one potato chip. After some time, the fear-drenched side subsided…but it certainly didn't leave.

He came to one conclusion to justify it.

He liked seeing Ryou relaxed like that.

It made perfect sense. He was…his therapist, after all.

Yes, it made perfect sense.

"Really wonderful," Bakura continued. "Glad I came to watch."

Everything else he had felt…he would work that out in due time.

The three retreated back to their hotel room shortly after. Kyouko was desperately trying to hide her yawns by covering her mouth with her hand after being cleaned and dressed for bed, but a few sharp words from her father busted any of her plans to stay up any later.

"But I'm not sleepy yet," she protested, bouncing up and down on the springy mattress Bakura was currently sprawled out and watching television on. "I want to watch TV with ji-chan for a little longer."

"Kyouko-chan. If I don't see you asleep when I come back out of the bathroom," Ryou warned as he rummaged though his bag of toiletries, "I'll make sure Bakura-san will never draw for you again."

Bakura grinned to himself, but then turned to face Kyouko with a solemn nod. The girl made a discontent whine, but quickly burrowed under the covers. Bakura looked up to smile at Ryou, but the man had already disappeared into the bathroom.

Feeling rather awkward now, Bakura sat up and decided that the amusements were over. After shutting off the television, he sat down onto his own bed and opened up his duffel bag to make it look like he had something important to do. When his hand closed in on his sketchbook he had brought along, he roughly pulled it out.

Flipping it open to a fresh page, Bakura stared at the blank sheet for a while.

He didn't feel like doing work, so making more character designs for The King of Games was out. Besides, something else was on his mind at the moment…

He wondered how well he could draw Ryou now.

Bakura slowly began to draw the outline of the man's face. It wasn't as sharp as it used to be, because it seemed as if the contours had somehow softened somewhere along the line when Bakura started to keep him company.

The man had a straight nose… Lips that although were generally pursed together in a thin line, were still rather nicely shaped…

Bakura came to a standstill when his pencil reached to outline Ryou's eyes. He had nice eyes. "Not too dark," Bakura muttered to himself as he made a tentative sketch of them. This part was probably the most difficult, largely because he found it hard to look the man in the eyes majority of the time.

He frowned. How could he make the man look…alive?

A brief snippet of Ryou performing tonight flooded his mind. "Large… More rhombus-shaped than anything else," Bakura mumbled. "Bright… Smoldering—"

"What are you muttering about?"

"Huh?" Bakura looked up, and nearly dropped his notebook in surprise.

Ryou was standing quite a distance away from him, so _hell_, Bakura was rather glad that he had…good…vision.

What?

"What?" he repeated out loud in such a horrified tone that Ryou gave him another odd look in his… barely dressed state.

Bakura supposed that it was because he was an "artist" that he had the tendency to ogle things he's never seen before. Good reasoning. He could briefly recall once describing Ryou as sickly-looking— when he had first met the man sometime in late February of this year. "Definitely not now," Bakura breathed, because he was finding it hard to enunciate.

Ryou was still thin, but not on the wiry side like Bakura, and certainly not on the ill side like how Bakura had first labeled him. The man had perfect bone structure in his collarbone and shoulders, which the man had been hiding in those clothes all that time. Perfect proportions in his torso and arms, and not one portion of the man could possibly be considered undesirable to an artist.

Bakura would have like to continue making his mental calculations, but there were pajamas in the way—

"Holy _fuck_!" Bakura roared. "Put on some clothes!" He threw Ryou's duffel bag over to the owner. Ryou caught it with two, deft gloved hands and frowned.

"I left my pajama top in my bag," Ryou said, as if that explanation would cover all the questions swimming in Bakura's mind.

"And you couldn't have come back out wearing the clothes you went in with to go look for them?" Bakura snapped as he plugged the heels of his hands against his burning eye sockets.

"No, that would be counter-intuitive."

"I don't care! Don't go walking around half-nude!"

"You undressed in front of me. I thought I should make it fair," Bakura heard Ryou say matter-of-factly. "I won't do it again then if you have such a problem."

Bakura dropped his hands and opened his mouth to protest, until he realized that there was nothing to protest about. He rid himself of all thoughts with a violent head shake.

* * *

"_I'm doing my neighbor," Bakura explained to Yuugi, who was sitting next to him. That made sense. They were in Kaiba Corp, after all. _

_He frowned. There was something missing in this speech, which now that he thought of it, sounded awfully familiar… Like he said it before or something._

_"Lolli-lolli-lollipop! Oh, lollipop-pop!"_

_Kyouko suddenly popped out of nowhere, singing as she whirled about Bakura's chair in circles wearing a puffy dress. The dress she wore to the Nanase Concert, Bakura realized absentmindedly. This_ _was rather strange, because he didn't recall ever bringing her here to Kaiba Corp. "You asked Daddy what you wanted him to put in your mouth, ji-chan!" She held out a rainbow-swirl lollipop. "Daddy wants you to have it 'cause you asked him what you wanted him to put in your mouth!"_

_Bakura pressed his tongue against the hard candy after he stuck it in his mouth, but before he could pinpoint the taste, the images swirled again and the lollipop was gone._

"_Mm… You're quite talented, Bakura. It feels very good,' a throaty voice whispered in his ear. Bakura froze, and took another look at his surroundings. Yuugi and Kyouko had both disappeared, and the now frantic white-haired man was standing in the bathroom of his apartment. _

_Bakura stared into the mirror, and realized that Ryou was there with his reflection. The man was standing very closely behind him, closer than Bakura could remember. This felt kind of familiar as well, along with the staggering heat that was now dropping onto Bakura's bared shoulders. It was like when they played tug-of-war._

_...Hell, it wasn't only bared shoulders; Bakura took a quick glance down and realized that he wasn't wearing clothes at all. That should have struck out as odd. _

_Well, it was odd that it didn't strike out as so._

_Come to think of it, Ryou was only wearing pajama bottoms. That looked kind of familiar, too. He realized that Ryou was wearing nothing but those pajamas that Bakura had remembered him walking around their hotel room with._

_Ryou was staring at him through their reflections in the mirror, his unnaturally darkened brown eyes locking onto Bakura's scarlet ones as he smiled. The smile continued as Ryou brought up a pale, slim hand to brush Bakura's hair away from covering the latter's cheek. The slight movement caused the man's fingers to lightly stroke Bakura's cheekbone, and suddenly, it felt that that part of his face turned much warmer._

"_You're not wearing your gloves," Bakura pointed out rather stupidly. _

"_No, I'm not," Ryou agreed with the same husky murmur. His smile grew wider, and in that sense, more bizarre. Ryou's other hand splayed against the front of Bakura's chest, right around where the heart should be."Your heart is beating faster. You're getting excited again, aren't you?"_

_The hand slowly began to trail down his abdomen. _

The next morning, Bakura woke up with the back of his neck hurting. He bet it was because he was unused to beds like these fancy, hotel types. He didn't recall having any dreams, though, so it more or less felt like a smooth rest.

As the three got ready to leave the hotel, Bakura helped Ryou haul out all the bags with Ryou as Kyouko took a last minute restroom break in their room's bathroom.

Little kids.

He grinned as he dragged out the last bag with Ryou, and looked up when he heard an excited squeal in the hall.

"You're Bakura Ryou-sensei!" a young woman gasped as she ran up to them. Bakura sized her up and down in slight disdain as Ryou blinked at her. "Oh, your piece was so beautiful. I became an immediate fan!"

Voluptuous. Leggy. Too much war-paint on her face.

Bakura snorted and rolled his eyes, expecting Ryou to simply nod and have the gusher continue on her way. But the man stood there, politely accepting her compliments… And _smiling_ at her.

Why was he smiling at her?

Bakura didn't like this woman. He didn't like that Ryou was bothering to talk to her. There was an odd sense of hostility he was suddely feeling that he couldn't quite place.

"Daddy! I'm done!" Kyouko called as she ran out of the bathroom with sopping wet hands. Ryou immediately gave his daughter his undivided attention.

"Wipe your hands," he instructed as he took out a paper napkin from his jacket.

"Okay, Daddy!"

"…Oh. You have a daughter?" The woman's tone changed completely. "Oh, wow. Um… Well, it was wonderful meeting you, Bakura-sensei," she said before hastily bowing and retreating.

"Who was that?" Kyouko asked as Bakura cheerily took the napkin from her and threw it out in the garbage can near the room's door.

It landed inside with a perfect arc. "One point for Youtai Bakura," the man simply said.

* * *

**Author's Note:** So many references! Did you catch them all? Kyouko's lollipop song is an actualy song by the K-pop grounp 2NE1. Also, I actually split Yuugi's and Kaiba's duel based on the American dub and the Abridged Series. That part about forfeiting is from the dub, and the part about summoning those Blue Eyes is, of course, from YGOTAS.

The leaving-the-watch-in-the-patient gag! Was that even funny? My sister suggested that, along with the "trust me, I'm a doctor" bit and "if you're too straight, you'll snap" part. The part about Marik insulting Yuugi's stupidity is actually from the American dub during the fifth season, I believe, in a conversation between Jounouchi and Honda. Marik's terms "bullcrap" and "freaking, freaking do it" from the Abridged Series also comes around in this chapter. :D

I used the term "trousers" in this chapter, instead of the good ol' North American "pants," which apparently means "underwear" internationally. Well, excuse me for being an American.

For those slash hunters, I tried my best to make this chapter particularly slashy, because I really felt that it was time to reach that level.

Plot development! There were a lot of important scenes in this chapter that will come into the limelight later on. I do hope this chapter was worth the wait! Was it enjoyable?


	14. Females

Bakura was getting used to living life leisurely. Why wouldn't he? August was winding down to its last handful of days, and the formerly sweltering heat had now dissipated into an almost bearable haze.

And even though the Great Exalted Ruler of Kaiba Corp, also known as Kaiba Seto, had made it quite loud and clear that the graphics team "should've gotten off their asses and finished the damn project yesterday"_—_the deadline was actually nestled somewhere in the middle of September_—_ that was _still _alright.

How come, one might ask. What happened to the "beer-guzzling, swearing man," to use an epithet once used to describe him.

Ryou happened. And Kyouko, too, one mustn't forget about her. Why would Bakura fret? Ryou had gotten better, and Kyouko was happy about that. Ryou was getting slightly more friendly, and _Bakura_ was happy about _that_. They even had a dinner planned in a restaurant of Bakura's choice on the older man's birthday_—_what more could he want?

Everything was within reach_—_ the King Of Games: Duel Monsters deadline, Ryou's complete confidence_—_ He had even managed to hold his confusing, alarming feelings concerning his reaction to Ryou's performance out of sight and out of mind.

Life was good.

But there was just one drop of poison that had somehow managed to get into the serene lake that was Bakura's mind: that woman at the hotel.

It wasn't that she posed a particular threat to Bakura's happiness. But she _was_ the first sign that Bakura's slowly advancing_—_ and blind_—_ relationship with Ryou was going to possibly wither.

And possibly die altogether.

* * *

"We should've taken some photos at the concert or something," Bakura said out loud as he lay sprawled out on one of Ryou's couches, looking up to see the other man walking out of the kitchenette to join him. The other man had a customary glass of warmed milk in hand. It was already quite late; Kyouko had already gone to sleep, leaving the two adults in the living room.

Ryou sat down, carefully balancing his glass with a gloved hand before answering. "'Photos?'" he repeated as he took a slow sip.

"…Or a video or something," Bakura continued. "…You know, to remember it by. Like at your kid's field day." Trust Ryou to make a simple little regret look ridiculously awkward.

Ryou made a noncommittal sound, and took another sip. "Perhaps next time, then," he replied. "'Photos…'" the man muttered again. "That reminds me." Sip. "A coworker of mine asked me an odd question about photos today."

Bakura pushed himself with his arms so that he could sit up properly in order to listen to Ryou's story. "Yeah?"

"She asked me why didn't I put up any photos of my family on my desk." He frowned. "I didn't quite understand why she would ask me that, seeing that I don't talk about my private life at work."

Bakura thought for a moment to try to picture the woefully empty desk, save for a few composition books and a couple of bouquets from admirers. Then he made a sound of epiphanic discovery. "She must've asked you that because I took your kid there once."

Ryou stilled at the memory. Then he continued: "That makes sense then. No wonder she asked me about my…" A frown graced over Ryou's expressionless face. "What were her exact words? 'Significant other,' she used."

"'Significant other?" Bakura repeated with a snort. Yeah, he'd agree that that were an odd pick of words. "Like _you'd_ actually have a wife or something_—_"

It was pretty funny; to an outsider, of course one might think that Ryou had to have been raising a kid with _somebody_. But Bakura has always subconsciously regarded Ryou as a single father because Ryou's haphephobia would have made it impossible for him to have actually settled down with somebody back then.

Right?

His laugh became caught mid way up his throat.

A sudden, queasy sensation had Bakura's mind reeling back as he tried to remember whether he had ever seen Ryou wear a wedding band_—_The only time he would ever have seen his hands would have been if the man's gloves were off, and the only time that ever happened was when_—_

Without any warning whatsoever, Ryou laughed. The sudden, nearly caustic sounds sounded out of place on Ryou's more recent placid person. "Of course I don't have a wife!" the other man scoffed.

Of course not.

And just like that, the panic of reviving a taboo memory_—_a memory that Bakura had been trying his damnedest to suppress_—_dissipated before it ever manifested.

Bakura felt rather glad.

But then something else began to eat away at him instead. There was something very wrong with this answer, too.

…Why did he ever forget that Ryou as a single father made no sense?

'_Because you preferred his company over his secrets_,' a voice whispered quietly in his mind, so soft that Bakura couldn't hear it whatsoever.

"You never..." His voice died out completely, so he tried again. "You never got married?"

"No." Ryou laughed again, even covering his mouth with a gloved hand to stifle the apparent absurdity. "Excuse me…"

It was strange then, because Ryou's face slowly darkened, as if he suddenly remembered something that made him unhappy. Then that disappeared as well. "But if she saw Kyouko-chan, I suppose I can understand why she would think I did," Ryou continued, his voice once again monotonous. He frowned again. "I suppose that would explain her reaction."

"…Oh?" Bakura managed to say.

"Yes. She had the most peculiar expression on her face when I told her that I wasn't married. Several of my other coworkers, who were apparently listening to our conversation, looked very surprised as well."

Something was very, _very_ wrong.

When Bakura went back to 603 that night, his head was pounding up a storm.

He was too distracted to think of getting a bag of cookies to calm down, which only further proved that this issue was very, very dire.

He hadn't thought about this in a long time, the question of the real nature of Ryou's and Kyouko's relationship. He had just put the question to the side when he had decided that there were more important things than figuring out Ryou's family tree…

Namely, keeping Ryou company. Seeing Ryou smile. Having Ryou talk to him.

…Those things had, in turn, made Bakura euphorically happy.

Anxiety started to stir in the back of his mind: a heavy, draining cloud looming closer and obscuring his view. Bakura began to worry; something was interfering with the fragile strand he had tried so hard to connect between them.

'_Of course I don't have a wife.'_

The tone in which Ryou had said that_—_so _flippantly—_ irked Bakura for some reason.

It made sense that Ryou wasn't married, in a twisted, twisted way. He was haphephobic then. He wouldn't have been able to pursue any romantic relationships. Even Marik had said that the marks were at least several, several years old.

"He said so."

It was alarming enough that he had resorted back to talking to himself, but even more so that Bakura didn't realize that something was off about where his thoughts were taking him:

The matter whether Ryou ever had a wife wasn't even a fraction as important as whether Ryou had a child with her.

That should have started blaring a few warning sirens, and told him that perhaps it would be healthier to stop this train of thought before he thought of anything too panic-inducing.

But it didn't.

"Ryou wouldn't have been able to settle down and have Kyouko with a wife," Bakura said loudly to himself. He smiled then, as he curled up on his couch, and exhaled a breath he didn't know he was holding. His perception of Ryou wasn't the least bit changed:

He already knew that the man was resentful and awkward. He even already knew that the man had had some problems with projecting his bitter feelings about smoking and drinking. He prided himself on knowing a lot about Ryou; after all, he had fixed him up. Yes, Bakura had helped and made Ryou better_—_ He knew the extent of the man's follies, the end of the man's faults.

Ryou with a wife somewhere would have messed with everything he knew about him so far.

He smiled again at the averted crisis.

Then the smile slid off, and it suddenly felt very, very cold in the room because there were once again untraceable, perverse thoughts swirling about.

Ryou didn't necessarily have to be married in order to have children… _Casual sex could have done it._

"No," Bakura sharply said out loud, bringing his fingers up to his mouth and nervously gnawing on them. He refused to believe it.

Ryou didn't even let his own daughter hold his hand at that point. Ryou would _never _have had sexual relations with some woman. A woman had given birth to Kyouko, there was no doubt about it_—_she certainly didn't pop out of a rock somewhere. But Bakura would do nothing less than reject the hypothesis that…

Someone else had touched Ryou before he did.

Wasn't Bakura the first one?

The idea that Ryou had been _sexually intimate _with some woman would ruin _everything_.

'_Because you hate to share,' _that voice whispered again, this time loud enough for Bakura to hear over the buzz in his mind.

Panic rose up, and Bakura felt the danger of an impending anxiety attack as he bit down hard on his hand. "Ryou was haphephobic! I was the first one he touched!" he suddenly yelled, the pain not even registering this time. "Me!"

"Adoption," he continued in a mutter. He no longer cared that there were just too many problems with that; the circumstances of the family resemblance as well as Ryou's background, career, and age had long ago refused to accept it as a suitable explanation.

To hell with logic.

"Ryou didn't have fucking sex with _anybody_," he cursed, no longer aware that his mind had detached itself from his words of console. "He touched _me _first."

Bakura decided not to speak to Ryou about the problem with his unexplainable fear. There was a chance that Ryou would tell him what he wanted to hear, that Kyouko was adopted, and that Bakura was simply thinking too much into it.

But there was also the chance that Ryou would tell him that Kyouko was his biological child, that just because he wasn't married didn't mean he had been abstinent…

He would rather live in denial for as long as possible than face the possible truth of the second scenario.

So he kept it inside instead, and allowed anxiety to eat away at him.

* * *

Now that things were no longer cool and groovy in Bakura-Land, outside forces were making it apparent that Bakura needed to come back down to Earth. In other words, the work load, which had formerly seemed to have a very reasonable deadline, was causing surprising apprehension for the man right now.

Bakura could either do OT at Kaiba Corp, like he normally would have, or go directly home and work in the quietude of his apartment. He did neither, and found himself working at 601, with Ryou, instead.

It was ironic, that the person currently causing Bakura the most grief also gave him solace. But then, had it ever been any other way?

The reason was that despite the many questions that he was now unsure if he wanted to know the answers to, he refused to lose to this woman who may or may not have existed in Ryou's past.

He knew it was stupid and unreasonable, not to mention extremely unprofessional of him to even think that.

But he did it anyway.

And he felt better when he visited; he had established that fact a long time ago.

So it made perfect sense that he stood here now, in front of 601, a month before all the designs _must_ be in, waiting for Ryou to open the damn door already.

Fingernails dug painfully in his palms, breathing slightly uneven as he brought up his thumb to chew on as he waited.

Ryou's face came into view from in between the door jamb and the door frame as he opened it. "Bakura-san," he greeted.

"Ryou," Bakura replied with a nod, prying the flesh of his thumb away from his teeth. Ryou stared at him for a moment, as if studying the man's face, but then stepped back to let the man in. Bakura quickly followed.

"You were washing the dishes?" Bakura questioned, looking at the yellow rubber gloves Ryou were smoothly sliding over his already cotton-gloved hands as he walked into the kitchenette.

Well, of course he was washing the dishes; the man certainly wasn't about to cook with those on.

Ryou answered him anyway. "Yes, I was." He turned on the faucet again before speaking again. "Kyouko is already asleep, so I'm afraid there won't be much activity this evening."

"Already?"

"Yes, already."

"Oh, that's okay. I'll stay anyway." Bakura nodded a few times too many as he quickly sat down on a couch with his back perfectly straight and his fingers twisting impatiently over themselves. Then he remembered his reason for being here, and slung his bag over his shoulder in a sharp, twisted movement.

Ryou gave him another glance before going back to rinsing a plate. "As you wish."

Ryou didn't know that Kyouko's presence was somewhat secondary compared to his own. Despite that, though, Bakura still found himself shifting his weight uncomfortably from side to side as he listened to the steady gush of tap water coming from the faucet in the otherwise silent apartment.

Taking out his folders and thumbing through the stacks of papers within each of them, Bakura could just barely register that his hands were shaking, and that the sound of flapping papers in the air was rather annoying.

Then the shrill sound of the phone rang, and Bakura yelped in shock. His hands just barely catching all his papers before they scattered all about the floor, Bakura felt his temple throb painfully.

"Would you get that, Bakura-san?" Ryou asked, who appeared not to have witnessed the almost pathetic display in front of him.

"Right." Bakura quickly snatched the receiver off the cradle of the phone next to him, and jammed the plastic to his ear. "Hello. Ba_—_Bakura residence." Bakura didn't know why he faltered in saying those simple words.

He waited for someone to speak. No one did.

"Who is this?" he asked. There was a faint squeal on the other end, and then the line disconnected. "Hello? _Hello_?"

Faintly annoyed at the disturbance, and acting more like his former self than he had in the last day or so, he slammed the phone shut. "Punk."

"Who was it?" Ryou asked from the safety of the kitchenette.

"Fucking prank call," Bakura muttered. The other man simply made a noncommittal sound, and went back to his current task.

Bakura's mind, momentarily clear, willed his hand to pick up a pencil and begin sketching. It was almost bearable now, the constant buzzing in his ears… Yes, he _could _concentrate here_—_

_Brrrrrr._

Bakura instinctively tore the receiver off the rocker this time, until his mind, which still had at least some control, told him to be polite. "Bakura residence." There was that silence again. "Who's speaking?" Then the control disappeared again. "Who the fuck is it?" he shouted, louder than was quite necessary.

Finally, a feminine squeak answered: "I-I think I have the wrong number," and there was the click of another disconnected line. Bakura slammed the phone down, tendrils of what annoyance beginning to choke what was left of the already thinning bond between his mind and actions.

"You look very displeased today, Bakura-san." Bakura looked up to see Ryou standing right before him with not one, but two mugs in his hands. He blinked surprisingly as Ryou offered one of them to him. "It's tea. Drink," the man said simply.

Bakura obediently took the porcelain cup from him. "…Thanks," he muttered, for some reason not quite able to make eye contact to complement his gratitude with. A swirl of something not unpleasant flowed over Bakura as he took a sip and felt the weight of Ryou sitting down next to him.

This was nice. Very nice.

…Why did this feel nice?

"…alright?" Ryou asked. Bakura, in his thoughts, didn't catch anything the man had said before.

"Huh?" Bakura uttered stupidly, turning to face him.

Ryou was looking at him in concern.

Yes… Very nice.

"I asked if you were feeling alright, Bakura-san," Ryou repeated, his voice lowering. His free hand, the one not holding his mug, reached out, and gently touched Bakura's lower arm. "You're acting very odd."

Despite the layers of two different fabrics separating Bakura's arm from Ryou's fingers, Bakura suddenly felt a familiar heat rising to the surface of his skin. Bakura could only stare at him.

In surprise, that he knew. In something else as well, that he didn't know.

Ryou was narrowing his eyes now. "A bad day, perhaps?" Bakura could hear him question carefully. Bakura couldn't find the strength to answer him, because the only thing he could think of was that hand on his arm. Ryou made a thoughtful sound. "Why don't you tell me about what happened?"

"Tell you about it?" Bakura repeated, sounding very much like an idiot.

"Yes. It might… make you feel better. I know it does for me." Ryou was a bit stiff in adding that last sentence, but his expression didn't shift from genuine-looking concern.

"…There's nothing wrong," Bakura immediately lied. "Nothing to talk about."

Ryou gave him a look that suggested quite plainly that he didn't believe him. At all. But despite that, the man simply made another thoughtful sound, and rested his back against the couch as he stared straight ahead. "Then what _do_ you want me to do?"

Bakura cringed mentally at the man's slowly sharpening tone. "I just want…"

Ryou glanced over to him. "Yes?"

"I just want things to stay as they are. I don't want anything to change." The 'for the worse between us' part went unspoken.

"So you want… nothing."

"Yes. I want absolutely nothing."

* * *

Denial has spared Bakura the ugly truth on a number of occasions.

The gift that was denial had once very convincingly explained to him that there was no reason to find a girlfriend because Ryou was still in very need of help… even though the man was no longer haphephobic.

Denial had also very cheerfully told him that it was perfectly alright for Bakura to undress in front of Ryou and not feel the slightest tad awkward about it. No harm, no foul, and all of that stuff...except for seeing Ryou topless. Which was somewhat shocking, and maybe a little bit of something else, too, but that could be figured out later.

Since it meant nothing, after all.

Then there was the whole "Ryou-relaxed-makes-him-remember-something-that-he-said-that-he'd forget" debacle at the concert. Denial told him that Bakura had been Ryou's therapist, so it was nothing more than pure, unadulterated happiness that Bakura had felt when he saw Ryou's performance. Apparently, that applied to the summoning of a dark memory and his unexplainable physical reaction to it as well.

And what of substituting finger gnawing and junk food eating with visits to Ryou's? 'Perfectly suitable,' denial said with a thousand watt smile on its figurative face; the two were simply exchanging roles of therapist and patient. It had nothing to do with Bakura's exponentially increasing need for Ryou's presence at all.

Bakura should have known that denying the dire importance of all four of these facts would come bite him in the backside sooner or later. Some things were not meant to be ignored or pushed to the side, much like his refusal to tell Ryou about his slowly unraveling mind.

But of course he didn't know that, hence the impending backside-biting.

After all, the Dam of Denial could only hold so much.

* * *

Bakura was becoming quite dependent on his visits to 601. He always followed the same schedule upon arrival: sit down, drink tea, watch Kyouko, talk to Ryou. One might wonder how was this any different from when Bakrua had visited Ryou for the latter's sake.

That would have been a very good question. And a trick question, too.

There was no difference.

But that was what Bakura craved more than anything else.

_Anything._

He walked to the place of discussion now, a lot calmer than he had been since Ryou had very peculiarly told him that he had never been married. Bakura's booted footsteps made a satisfying sound as he sauntered out of the elevator and down the linoleum tiles of the hallway.

Clack, clack. Clack, clack. Clack, cla_—_

He stopped short, because there're were two girls currently standing in the way right in front of 601. Perhaps it would have been more biologically accurate to call them women, because the pair looked to be almost as old as Bakura was. Perhaps they were a few years younger.

But then, they _were_ pushing each other and bickering like children.

"_I'll_ give it back to him!"

"No, _I_ will! Back off, Akiko!"

Something about the nature of this conversation felt familiar, like he had heard something to this effect before. A brief image of schoolgirls fighting each other to escort Bakura and Kyouko up to the third floor of Satou Prep came to mind.

Oh, right. He remembered that.

He couldn't recognize the girls standing before him, but judging from the music composition book clutched tightly in the manicured hand of Akiko's companion, he had a strong feeling that he knew where they were from.

"What the hell are you two doing here?"

That got their attention. The two girls quickly shut their glossy lips as they faced him with wide, mascara-rimmed eyes, but neither said anything.

"I asked you two what the fuck you're doing here," Bakura repeated loudly. He didn't think he was coming across as hostile, but the girls apparently did, because they suddenly grabbed for each other's arms in fear.

The door of 601 opened. "Bakura-san, is that you?" Ryou looked up in faint surprise at the small mob in front of him. "Yamashita-san. Sawara-san." He bowed slightly to the girls.

"Oh! Bakura-sensei!" Yamashita and Sawara bowed hastily back, their voices breathless and their hair bouncing over their shoulders. It was only at that moment that Bakura realized that they were supposed to be rather pretty.

"Akiko realized that Bakura-sensei had left one of his books in a classroom this afternoon, so Akiko is trying to return it to Bakura-sensei!" the girl, whom Bakura was _pretty damn sure was_ Akiko, said.

He sneered at the use of the third person to address oneself. How old did she think she was?

"I helped!" the other girl piped up.

"Oh. Thank you very much, then," Ryou said. "In the future, it would be fine for any forgotten possessions to be left on my desk."

"We wanted to return it personally!" Akiko's companion replied in what Bakura supposed was meant to be a cute voice. Bakura snorted in disgust.

"I see." Ryou managed a smile at that, and the smirk on Bakura's own face slipped right off. "Why don't you two come in? It's still quite early. I'd like you two to have some tea as thanks before you leave."

"Why can't they just go back right now?" Bakura finally asked softly.

Ryou glanced away from the two females in front of him. "Bakura-san!" He sounded surprised, as if he didn't know Bakura was there. Yamashita and Sawara gave him a fearful look again. Then Ryou looked angry. "Don't be rude. They are my coworkers and my guests." He turned to the two girls again as he opened the door wider. "Please. Come in."

A sharp throb known as indignation flared and covered an underlying emotion known as dismay.

Bakura willed his legs to follow the other three inside after realizing he would look only more foolish if he stood out here instead.

"Kyouko-chan, greet Yamashita-san and Sawara-san. They work with Daddy," Bakura could hear Ryou say as he pushed through the two women to sit down.

"Oh! We've met before, Kyouko-chan! Remember? When you visited Satou Prep with_—_ah_—_" The woman named Akiko glanced over to Bakura, who had made himself right at home sitting on the couch lengthwise.

Bakura ignored the second dirty look Ryou gave him for refusing to introduce himself.

"This is Youtai Bakura. He's a neighbor on this floor," Ryou replied as he walked into the kitchenette and took out some cups.

"Your neighbor! So Yo-Youtai-san is your _neighbor_!" the other one cried.

Bakura didn't understand why that seemed to be such a topic of wonder.

Kyouko, who had been scribbling what appeared to be abstract art on paper, blinked widely at the influx of strangers. Then she smiled, like a bright little girl would. "Yamashita-san! Sawara-san!"

"Oh! She's so cute!" one of them sighed.

It didn't take long for Kyouko to warm up to them. For the first time since meeting Kyouko, Bakura wished that she wasn't so friendly towards strangers.

It was such a selfish thought that Bakura almost felt ashamed.

So he sat there in a corner, wallowing in shame and such as the happy four conversed amongst themselves.

He could have gone home. He _should_ have gone home, because there sure as hell wasn't anything for him to do here. And he _would_ have gone home if he would have just given up his ridiculous pride.

Tea lasted too long. Ryou served the two "guests" first, and then almost angrily shoved Bakura's own mug into his hands. That hurt.

Not once did Kyouko come over to him and ask him draw something for her. Not once did Ryou move from his seat in front of the two women in order to sit next to him for a little while. That hurt even more.

He couldn't force himself to open his bag and draw anything. He let anxiety play around with opening and closing his throat instead, and let shame flush his cheeks and stiffen his legs.

He didn't even look up as they leave, and certainly didn't acknowledge their departure.

"What was wrong with you tonight, Youtai Bakura?" Ryou's voice was flat. It was no longer outwardly angry, but Bakura knew how close it was to reaching that level.

It was odd, hearing Ryou call him by full name again. Regression, wasn't it?

Bakura managed to make a face of utmost nonchalance. "Nothing."

"Well, if it was _nothing_, I would ask you not to act like that in front of guests again," Ryou snapped.

"Well, you never had guests before when I was here. How was I supposed to know how to act?" Bakura muttered, scratching his pencil along the paper.

"Not like how you did tonight, Bakura-san." Bakura could feel him glaring at his lowered head. He made a grunt, supposedly in agreement, and could hear Ryou make a sound of extreme frustration. "Kyouko-chan, get ready for your bath. I'll set the water." Ryou left the room without so much as another word.

Kyouko, who finally seemed willing to return to Bakura's side after the women had left, bounded over to him. "Weren't those two ladies nice, ji-chan? They just work part-time with Daddy, but they still wanted to come all the way here to bring his book back! Did you like them?"

Bakura made sure Ryou was completely out of earshot before answering with a truthful and flat 'no.'

"Ehh! Why not?" Kyouko looked at him with her magnified, doe eyes.

"…You wouldn't understand," Bakura muttered.

"If you tell me, maybe I will!"

"You won't, alright?" Bakura snapped. "Leave it alone." He paused. "And don't tell your dad."

Kyouko agreed not to mention Bakura's ill will towards the two women, and so went off to her bath, dinner, and bedtime true to her word. It didn't really matter anyway, because even if Ryou knew that Bakura disliked _everybody _that walked through that front door, he wasn't going to stop inviting them in.

When Kyouko went off to bed, Bakura noticed glumly how late it was already, and how much time had gone to waste entertaining Ryou's frivolous colleagues.

Ryou sat down next to him now, warmed milk in one hand, and the bridge of his nose in the other.

'It's all in vain,' Bakura thought nastily to himself. 'They ruined it. It's not the same anymore.' Despite that, he set down his pencil on the table and sat back as well.

"Bakura-san." Ryou was calm again.

"What?" Bakura bit back. He wasn't as relaxed.

"I have a question."

"Ask away."

"…It _is_ a good thing that I am interacting with more people, isn't it?"

Bakura looked up to see Ryou looking right at him with an honest-to-gods expression on his face. It was like time had stilled, and the rest of the world was waiting with baited breath to hear what Bakura would say to that.

He wanted to say 'no.' No, he did not think it was a good thing that Ryou was interacting with others, because that meant he would interact with Bakura less, and how could Ryou not see the obvious math in that?

"Of course," Bakura heard himself reply.

Because it was the right thing to say.

But was it right, really? More specifically, was it fair? Bakura had never thought he would be one of those people who harped about every tiny little thing… but Bakura deserved Ryou's time, too. And Ryou's coworkers saw him all the time at work_—_ why the hell did they need to see _more_ of him?

And they _definitely_ went out of their way to see more of him. It wasn't just Sawara and Yamada_—_or Yamashita_—whatever the hell the name was_, either. Students and coworkers alike were suddenly taking advantage of the now hospitable, friendly, non-haphephobic Ryou over the next few days. How could he protect 601's door if Ryou was willingly letting them all in? He couldn't understand why Ryou suddenly started to tolerate them, with their gifts and favors as excuses.

It was shocking to realize how quickly things were starting to spiral out of control for him. Things were _perfect_ as they were.

"It's not fair, it's not fair, it's not fair," Bakura whispered fiercely to himself around his raw fingers still pressed roughly against his gnawing teeth. It was after another night of doing nothing but sitting there in Ryou's apartment while the other man politely received guests over tea and talk. "It's not _fair_."

Bakura desperately wanted to know what had started it. No one contacted Ryou outwardly before, or at least no one that Bakura knew about. When the man was haphephobic, Bakura was quite sure that he only had those ridiculous secret admirers within the students and fellow colleagues. He deduced that much from his sole successful visit to Satou Prep.

But after Ryou's Nanase Concert, everything seemed to change: that woman at the hotel was the first person Bakura had ever witnessed Ryou talking to so amicably to. And then all the others from the workplace that followed could only be traced up after Ryou told them that he had no "significant other."

What did it all mean?

As Bakura tried to figure that out, he could only continue fighting for his rightfully deserved attention. "I helped him get over it all. His haphephobia. It's not fair. I didn't do it so he could spend all his time away_—_"

'No, you said that you wanted to do everyone a favor. You wanted Ryou to be more sociable and that's why you had told yourself that you were going to help rid the man of his fear,' the voice explained patiently.

Bakura let out a choked sound, inaudible to everyone but himself.

He had even told Ryou that he wanted nothing. And true to his word, Ryou didn't give him anything… He had given it all to his plethora of acquaintances instead.

Nothing, indeed.

But this was the wrong kind of nothing.

* * *

Bakura gnawed away at the flesh of his thumb as he walked up the steps to Ginmaru Apartments' lobby the following evening. With more than slight irritation as he recognized a few of the faces of the younger students already a few steps ahead of him, a startled Bakura was able to set down his hand as he saw a face that had felt like ages since he had seen last.

"Overtime, huh? Well, work is important…" Jounouchi Katsuya talked away into his phone as he shuffled through his mail. He looked the same as ever_—_ worn, comfortable clothes, messy hair that nearly hung over his eyes. And that phone he always seemed to be on. "You need anyone to watch your brother? I can get over there and play some video games with him to keep him company…"

Ever since Bakura had really started sticking around Ryou, he had rarely, if ever, seen the blond, whom of course had his own life to live. Seeing him now was like a blast into the nostalgic past…

"Oh, you can thank me later…" Jounouchi said mysteriously into the phone as he steadied the phone with his chin and shoulder to arrange all the post.

The girls were watching Jounouchi from a corner, huddled to the side and giggling. As Jounouchi walked by them, the giggling and blushing became more apparent, and then full out squeals as Jounouchi accidentally dropped a letter on the floor.

"Damn it. No, I just dropped some mail_—_Oh! Thanks." Jounouchi grinned in appreciation to the tittering girl who picked up the envelope for him. Then his attention went back to the person on the other line. "Huh? Oh, just a girl who helped pick it up. Really, there's no need to get that nuts about it_—_" Jounouchi went on his way up the stairs.

The resulting squeals from the gaggle made Bakura scowl. All of them were just here to watch "shows."

They certainly didn't need to have Ryou like he did_—_

Bakura froze in step, and could only watch as the girls skipped off into the ready elevator waiting for them.

When did "want" turn to "need?"

But wasn't it need?

Not need. He could find other ways. Eating. He could go back to eating.

He _had_ to go back to eating. His hands were starting to hurt. Sooner or later, Yuugi was going to start noticing that Bakura was hiding his hands whenever he popped his head over to the neighboring cubicle. Which was very often.

So he went to the supermarket before work the next day, his movements jerky and unnatural as he grabbed for as many brightly-colored bags as he could. The woman at the cashier raised her eyebrows at the sight, but knew better than to say anything to the agitated, restless man before her biting at what was left of his nails.

Bakura was already cramming his face filled with crème-covered cookies by the time he stepped out onto the graphics floor. Yuugi quickly waved him over to their workspace with a loud and hearty "Good morning, Youtai-kun!"

"I've got something really _weird_ to show you_—_" Yuugi's eyes were very wide when he saw the mass of plastic bags. "Are you throwing a party tonight, Youtai-kun?"

"No." Bakura sat down stiffly, wiping his mouth of the crumbs before ripping open another bag. Replacing Ryou's presence wasn't difficult at all… He could force himself to eat through all of these bags if he tried hard enough…

"Then why all the_—_"

"Don't ask."

"Well, I _still _got something really, really interesting to show you!" Yuugi eagerly rolled over to the other man's desk in his chair and held out a magazine. "I saw it on the newsstand, and it _completely_ blew my mind, and I just _had_ to buy it and show it to you!"

Bakura didn't take the bait.

"…Aren't you going to ask me what's so interesting about it?"

"No." Finishing the chips, Bakura bent down and snatched up the closest bag of chocolate cookies. His stomach clenched in protest, but he began to chew anyway.

Yuugi sighed huffily, and flipped open the periodical. "There's an article with Kaiba-kun in it!" He waited for a reply. He got none. "It's like one of those annual articles about Japan's most eligible bachelors, Youtai-kun! Kaiba-kun was booted off the list, can you believe that? He has _always _been on the list!"

Bakura couldn't care less if Kaiba was off this list or off his rocker right now.

He wasn't feeling too good. Slowly setting down the bag, Bakura began to shift uncomfortably in his chair.

"I mean, is it 2012 _already_? Look at what it says here: 'Kaiba Seto is no longer qualified as an eligible bachelor due to revealed photos where the multi-millionaire is seen with a mystery blonde on a trip to Bermuda!' You remember when Kaiba-kun went there! You can't really see her face_—_whoever took these photos only got a fuzzy back view_—_but you _can _see Kaiba-kun holding hands with her_—_"

Bakura suddenly bolted out of his seat, and clapped his hand against his mouth.

"Youtai-kun? Oh, my _god_! What happened to your fingers_—_ Ah! Youtai-kun!" Bakura had already sprinted out of the office and into the men's restroom. He nearly tripped on the marble-tiled floor, and almost slipped as he slammed open the door, but he finally managed to make it into an unoccupied stall to regurgitate the contents of everything he had eaten in the past hour.

Involuntary and angry tears sprung to the white-haired man's eyes as he gagged, and Yuugi's anxious cries as he rushed in after him were just barely audible as Bakura could feel what felt like sledgehammers banging against the sides of his head.

No. He couldn't replace Bakura Ryou after all.

* * *

**Author's Note: **This was a very…erm… angst-ridden chapter, I think. Wow. I think this had more uncomfortable scenes than the rest of the story combined. Eep. But it was a very important chapter! You will see that when I post up the next part.

Whoa, it feels odd trying to think of anything funny to say after writing this chapter. So I won't! I shall just mention that there is new fan art posted on my Deviantart for this story! The link is, as always, on my profile.

Two references: one is from YGOTAS's Yuugi with the "is it 2012 already." The other is from Toy Story 3's Ken for "cool and groovy." Sorry. I really like that movie.

As always, I appreciate any and all feedback from you guys. **I cannot stress the importance of a review enough. **Leave a comment, yeah? :)

Ooh~ How embarrassing! I copied and pasted a review from a conversation I had with a lovely reviewer from my private messaging into the "reviews" section, but left it under my name. Gack! I'm sorry, **Lady Eris Discordia**.


	15. Interference

An odd thought sprouted in Bakura's mind when he finally managed to stand up straight in the stall:

'It's September first.'

Huh. What a wonderful thing for a man who had just finished hurling into a shiny porcelain bowl to think about.

…Bakura's sarcasm liked to come up at inopportune times.

"August is dead," he muttered to himself.

Any true mirth behind the cynicism had been dispelled along with his stomach contents and now sat in the mess in front of him. "Gone," he continued lowly. The sickening, burning sensation in his esophagus and throat continued to burn and Bakura gagged at the bitter taste in his mouth. His mouth twisted into a dark scowl. "Gone, gone, gone…" he repeated quietly to himself.

He roughly swatted down the lever in order to flush everything away, and had to resist retching again as he did so.

"Youtai-kun! Youtai-kun!" Yuugi was still wailing from outside the stall. "_Youtai-kun_…!"

"Stop it, Mutou," Bakura hissed as he pushed open the stall's door and dragged himself out of the cramped space. Ignoring his coworker as the other man immediately swooped to his side, Bakura stalked over to the sinks and wrenched open a knob beside the faucet.

Yuugi's wailing went up an octave. "I told you to _shut the fuck up_!" Bakura shrieked, whirling his head around to face the man.

Yuugi clapped a hand over mid-whine and settled to just ogle Bakura with wide eyes instead.

Bakura grunted, and began to scoop up water using his hands as he dipped his head lower. After a few silent moments spent gargling, Bakura stood up straight again and wiped away any excess droplets of water using a forearm.

"I'm fine. I just had a little too much to eat just then. It's not a problem," Bakura said loudly into the mirror. "Understand? I. Just. Ate. Too. Much." Bakura made sure to put emphasis on every syllable so Yuugi could get it past that spiky hair and into that thick skull of his.

"…But why couldn't you stop, Youtai-kun? If you ate so much that you knew you were going to get sick…" Yuugi's reflection was looking at him with the same watery purple eyes. "You never did that before."

His meaning was clear. Yuugi thought that he was ill…not only in the physical sense, but that there was something wrong with his mind.

"Don't be an ass, Mutou. Mind your own business," Bakura snapped into the mirror.

Bakura suddenly felt another wave of nausea going for a one-way trip up the old hatch. Quickly rushing back into the stall, he gave a squealing Yuugi a warning jab with an elbow to make sure the man stayed out of his way.

Several minutes later, Bakura announced in the private confines of Kaiba Corp's men's bathroom on the seventeenth floor that he was leaving early.

Surprisingly, Yuugi left it alone at that. For once, perhaps, he knew better than to try any probing questions and only accompanied him quietly out to the cubicles with nothing more than anxious, purple eyes.

"I'll tell the secretary that you weren't feeling well… I'll just leave this in your bag then, okay, Youtai-kun?" Yuugi slipped the forgotten magazine into the worn messenger satchel, and even redid the clasps. "You can look at it when you're feeling better."

Bakura grunted again as he slung his bag over a tired shoulder. Letting out a shuddering sigh as Yuugi quietly wheeled away, he left the building.

Where to go?

The traffic was so damn loud. It was almost as infuriating to listen to as Ryou's little admirers.

'Shit.' Bakura mentally spat at the image of the make-up painted, shapely-breasted women that appeared in his mind as he stalked out onto the streets. Bakura had just about had as much as he could handle without doing something he'd regret big-time. He had tried being _civilized_, because really, how else could someone describe his limited range in hospitality?

There was still a taste of something unpleasant in his mouth; it wasn't of bile, but something equally bad. He was sullen and restless, and not in the mood to visit tonight and watch Ryou entertain visitors.

"Ryou, Ryou, Ryou, Ryou…" he muttered to himself. "Ryou's at work."

An image of long-legged and perfume-sprayed women crowding around Ryou's work desk loomed over his head. "Let's visit Ryou," Bakura murmured to no one in particular, his mood suddenly lightened for a brief moment as he began walking down the stairs to the subway station.

Bakura crossed his arms and brought his legs in, huddled to the side of the seat as he rode his train looking all the part of a homeless person. He stared suspiciously at the beautiful model in an advertisement on the wall next to him. The young lady in the shampoo ad smiled plastically back.

Kemo let him through as soon as he saw him storm into Satou Prep. Good. One less person's head to bite off.

When he arrived on the third floor, Bakura made a bee-line straight for Ryou's desk as the sea of people working there parted for the man to make his journey. He made sure to scowl at every woman that he recognized along the way, a little more than paranoid that these people were the ones at fault.

Ryou wasn't at his desk, Bakura realized in panic. He scanned the rest of the area, but no, he didn't forget where the desk was. He recognized the Spartan-like decorations and those flowers. The latter of which had never bothered him before, but looking at the new daffodils and irises with the senders' cards attached was starting to make the incoming headache worse.

"Where the fuck is Bakura Ryou?" he asked loudly to the small crowd that had just finished settling around him.

There was some brief elbowing amongst the throng.

"He's teaching at the moment," an older man in the horde answered. "Eh, what business would you happen to have with Bakura-sensei, eh…em…?"

"Which room?"

"Eh…Really, sir. We can't just have you walk into our classrooms—"

"Which _room_?"

"That one," the man immediately pointed to a door down the hall. Bakura once again parted seas as he stormed to his destination. Quiet whispers erupted around him, none of which he paid attention to as he continued walking.

"What's going on?"

"He looks pissed."

"A lover's spat?" the first wondered.

"Hold on. Bakura-sensei told Nakamura-sensei and all the other women that he didn't have…someone," replied the same person who had pointed out Bakura's dark expression.

"He said that he wasn't _married_. That's not the same as not having someone," a third man spoke up.

"Kuroda's right. This man's been up here before, remember? … And we all thought that he was Bakura's…you know back then, too," another man pointed out.

"See? Tanaka agrees with me." The man named Kuroda sounded smug.

"Oh, shut it, Kuroda. You're just jealous that the girls like Bakura more than you," a young woman snapped.

"Oi! That is _not_ true!" Kuroda protested.

"He looked cooler before…" a voice starting a side conversation trailed off.

"What do you mean?" another questioned in reply.

"But Yamashita and Sawara said that we were mistaken!" an older woman objected to Tanaka and Kuroda in response to the main topic at hand.

"You can't trust everything those two temps say. If they were right, what's he doing here, then?" Kuroda asked flatly.

"Bakura's been acting more friendly recently, did you guys notice…? Maybe he wanted to break up so he could have a serious relationship with a woman and now his jilted ex-lover's back to settle things between them…"

"You've been watching too much American television, Kobayashi."

"This is getting confusing, you guys. Are you saying that Bakura-sensei really _is—_"

In his mental fog, Bakura smacked into someone on his or her way out of the classroom he was about to enter. "Watch where the fuck you're going—" He wasn't originally going to bother to turn to see who it was, but this person had a very familiar nice scent on him…

Ryou narrowed his eyes while rubbing his smacked shoulder very slowly.

Bakura immediately smiled and steadied himself. "Ryou! It's you!"

"Yes, it's me." Ryou frowned. "What are you doing here, Bakura-san?"

"Wanted to see you," Bakura said vaguely. "You finished your class?" Bakura was just barely aware that his fingers were twitching.

"…Yes, I did."

"So where are you going now?"

"I'm on my lunch break now."

"Really?" His own hands were outright shaking now, but still, Bakura did not notice. "I haven't eaten yet either— I mean, I _have—_ Well, forget that— Let's go eat together! We haven't eaten lunch together in a long time," he finished in a rush.

Bakura didn't understand why Ryou was furrowing his eyebrows or deepening his frown. And why the heck did Ryou keep looking down at Bakura's hands and then back up at his face? What a way to make him feel self-conscious.

"Alright," Ryou finally said slowly. "Let me get my wallet." He gestured a gloved hand over to his work desk.

Bakura was more than willing to move to the side and let the man pass. So he did, quickly following the man's footsteps back to the desk. Ryou had the same effect on the human sea parting, and as he turned to face the crowd, the entire ocean went quiet. "I'll be at lunch with a friend today. I expect to return within the hour." Ryou then turned to Bakura, and beckoned towards him. "Come, Bakura-san."

Bakura was glad to.

* * *

"Why aren't you at work today, Bakura-san?" Ryou asked as he pulled up to their table with a cup of coffee and a sandwich. The action caused his hair to swish to the front, which Bakura found rather distracting.

The two were currently sitting in a tiny café close by to Satou Prep. It was rather comfortable there, according to Bakura, even though they were sitting at a table for two with a surface area no larger than that of a garbage can lid.

Bakura fiddled with his own sandwich, but didn't take a bite out of it. "I left early. I wasn't feeling well."

"…And so you came to see me? Why didn't you go home?"

"No one's home," Bakura immediately replied, trying to resist rolling his eyes. Really, how clueless could Ryou be sometimes?

"…I see." Ryou finally answered with a sigh, brushing back his bangs. "But if you're feeling sick, Bakura-san, you should go see a doctor. I can't really help you."

"I'm feeling better now."

"…Are you sure? You were acting a bit odd when you came to visit me today."

"What the hell are you talking about? I'm feeling loads better. Loads."

"That's good to hear." Ryou shook his head, causing his hair to fall over his face again. "Kyouko-chan wouldn't be too happy if you were sick tomorrow." The man took a small bite of his food and began to chew quietly.

"Why? What's happening tomorrow?" Bakura asked as he took a cautious bite of his own food. He didn't exactly trust his digestive system to understand the difference between up and down at the moment.

Ryou stopped chewing, and let out a soft snort, sending his bangs up in a puff of air.

Bakura frowned at the odd reaction, finally able to pry his eyes and his mind away from Ryou's hair. What was so special about tomorrow? Today was… today was the first day of September of the year 20XX.

Right.

Okay.

Then Bakura made a short squawking sound.

Today was September first. That meant only _one_ thing.

Did it mean that yesterday was the thirty-first? Of course it did. But it also meant tomorrow was going to be the second.

Tomorrow was going to be September second.

Ryou's birthday was September second.

Ergo, Ryou's birthday was tomorrow.

Holy shit.

Bakura suddenly lunged for an utterly calm and sandwich-chewing Ryou, grabbing for whichever part was closest to him. The fact that he had went for the hand, and that the sudden action pulled a disgruntled sound from Ryou as his sandwich from his other hand tipped over dangerously, didn't register. "I forgot! I-I actually forgot that tomorrow's your _birthday_!"

Ryou remained very composed, and simply blinked at him in surprise. "It's quite alright." His brown eyes shifted over to the death-grip Bakura had on his limb. "Would you kindly remove your hand? You're holding on quite painfully—"

"You promised that I could choose a place for us to eat! Just us two!" Bakura was so overjoyed that he couldn't quite hear what Ryou was saying. No matter, it couldn't be that important anyway; what could be more important than Ryou's _birthday—_?

"Yes, Bakura-san. I promised that. Now, let go—"

"I have to choose one." Bakura was beginning to talk very loudly to himself. Tendrils of excitement were sparking together in his mind, creating bright, bright flames that were starting to resemble a wild-fire. He sat back abruptly, absentmindedly dropping his grip on Ryou to clap his hands together in uncharacteristic glee. "I will. I can promise you that, Ryou! I can promise you _that_!" he crowed.

For some reason, Ryou had set down his food and was tenderly rubbing the tips of his fingers on the opposite hand's wrist. "There really is no need to be so serious about it."

"Of course there is," Bakura snapped back. Really, was Ryou daft? "What would _you _know? I need to get a cake. I need to buy something for you. I have to choose a place to eat— Holy fuck, where should we go?"

Bakura needed to make plans. Oh, plans! He loved making plans. Most of his plans didn't go very well, but this was different; these were birthday plans—and not just anyone's birthday. These were _Ryou's_ birthday plans.

That meant that tomorrow had to be perfect—no coworkers on Ryou's part, no Yuugi on his own. It's an important night for an important person, after all—"Kyouko-chan has already picked out a cake," Ryou said slowly, lifting up his sandwich again.

"_Already? _Why didn't you let me help decide, too?" Bakura smacked the table with his palms, scandalized.

"…It's just cake, Bakura-san." Ryou paused, setting it back down. "And it's alright if you don't get me a gift—"

"What the hell are you talking about—?"

"No. In fact, I refuse to accept something that you buy."

"What?"

"You're… a little too concerned about everything else right now. Don't buy anything."

"I can manage—"

"Don't buy anything." Warning spikes sharpened his tone.

"…Fine."

"I don't want you to overexert yourself, Bakura-san."

Bakura scoffed at the absurdity of the warning. Really. Ryou could be so insufferable sometimes.

* * *

"Things to do, things to do…" Bakura drummed impatient fingers against his bag as he opened the door to 603 with his other hand later that afternoon. He had many things to do—so many things, in fact, that he told Ryou just as they finished lunch that he might not come by tonight. "Things to do…" He shucked off his shoes, almost tripping over the threshold in his haste. He made a grunt but steadied himself, too distracted to start insulting his ill-placed furnishings.

Bakura threw off his bag and promptly snagged a sheet of paper lying on his table over to him as he sat down on the floor. Picking up a pencil from a nearby coffee mug used to hold such stuff, he hurriedly wrote "Ryou's Birthday Plans: Restaurant" on the top of the sheet, underlining the messy kanji and hiragana with surprising steadiness.

If there was any clue that Ryou was right, that Bakura was acting a little out of the ordinary, it sure didn't present itself to the man. It didn't quite go through to him that it was just a birthday, and not a really significant number at that.

It was possible that Bakura had suddenly found a lot of joy in birthdays and celebrations.

Or, if not that, then perhaps Bakura needed something to concentrate on— his age-old fear of boredom and all of that. He had nothing else to do, so why not plan for a twenty-five year old man's birthday?

Or maybe, just maybe, it was because tomorrow was the sole guarantee that for once, in matters concerning Ryou lately, he could have things _his_ way.

Perhaps if things had not turned out this way— if the ladies of Satou Prep stayed at Satou Prep, Bakura wouldn't be so uptight about this now.

Perhaps.

"Restaurant," he muttered. "Quiet, absolutely. Small… not necessarily, but preferred…Casual. Casual's good." He thought quickly as he scribbled those criteria down,. He tapped his pencil against the worn, scratched table.

He was faintly aware that the foundation on his fixation on sweets had unsteadied.

Unfortunately, he was unaware that the entity that he had haphazardly decided to replace his bouts of anxiety was much more detrimental for his emotional health.

"Kind of food? No Western-style places." He made sure to put a big 'X' over the suggestion several times. "Pot roast? No, too hot. The humidity will make my skin start turning red. Seafood?" He paused. "Seafood!" he repeated jubilantly. "That place that we all went to before!"

Memory slivers of Ryou asking Bakura to resume visiting them after that nasty foul-up in which the two had nearly split up for good wafted by.

'_You… are a different kind of person, Youtai Bakura. And that is why I appreciate your coming over and rather not anybody else's.'_

That was what Ryou had said to him in his explanation of why he wanted him back.

"That was a sweet thing for him to say," Bakura murmured out loud, now that he really thought about it. A slight smile that went unnoticed appeared. He wrote down the name of the place on his paper, circled in twice, and put a star next to it. "Good sentimental value. I wonder if he remembers?" Bakura wondered.

Exhaling in contentment, Bakura set down his pencil and began to rock back and forth while looking over his plans.

It didn't really seem like that was enough. Ryou deserved more than that, didn't he?

"Bastard doesn't want me to buy him anything," Bakura muttered, not without the slightest bit of affection in his tone. "Why would he say that? I wouldn't get him something stupid," he muttered. "Fucking idiot doesn't know how lucky he is that I even thought of getting him something in the first place. 'Overexert' myself? Ha! What a riot."

He fidgeted and fidgeted, but still came to the conclusion that he couldn't let that stand.

* * *

The next morning, Bakura woke up to the sounds of birds crowing and Old Man Tachibana watering the plants in the apartment's garden square with an industrial-strength hose.

He made a grunt as he peeled himself off his futon and scratched messily at his tangles of stark white hair. Then he bolted up. "September second!" he yelled. Whirling his head about, there was a brief scuffle as he searched for the fruit of last night's toil. Bakura calmed when a frantic hand finally knocked against the thing that he had stayed up the better half of the night doing. He grinned, packed it carefully in his bag, and went about his usual morning routine.

"I'm not coming in today." Bakura braced himself for a sound tongue-lashing by holding his phone a little further from his ear, but the lecture never came. "Mutou. You heard that? I said I'm not working today."

"It's okay, Youtai-kun! You take today off, alright? Rest up and feel better! I'm sure that Kaiba-kun will understand!" Yuugi was simply oozing with sympathy. He was _oozing_ it.

"…Whatever." Bakura had to wince at not telling Yuugi the whole truth of why he had spontaneously decided to call in "sick" today. Whoa. Guilt?

"Maybe I should come visit you—?"

"Don't even think about it."

"Maybe a fruit basket, then?"

"Absolutely not."

"A card?"

"No."

Bakura could hear the pout in Yuugi's voice. "…Okay…"

"See you whenever then."

"Yeah! Feel better soon, okay? Byes!"

Apparently, Ryou still had to return to Satou Prep in order to tie up a few loose-ends before he could take the rest of the day off. That left Bakura and Kyouko to go pick up the cake.

Bakura frowned at the cream and strawberry bedazzled dessert decorated with ponies and the like with some dissatisfaction when the pastry chef set down the thing on the counter, but he was too moved by Kyouko's glee at the sight— "Yay! It's just like the one I wanted, ji-chan!"—to say anything about it.

The celebration started in 601 when Ryou returned from Satou Prep. It could best be described as quaint but awkward at worst around the little dining table, but both Bakura and Kyouko were thrilled anyway.

"Come on, Ryou!" Bakura hooted with laughter as he tried to push the cake-laden plastic fork into Ryou's mouth. The man was good-naturedly pushing the fork away with a thin smile on his face, but Bakura wasn't about to give up.

"You know I don't really like sweets that much, Bakura-san…"

"It's your birthday and you barely had a bite of your own cake! Have a little."

"Yeah, Daddy! Listen to ji-chan! Listen to him!" The excitement was contagious.

"Alright…" Ryou relented. His voice dropped to a whisper. "Only for you, Bakura-san."

Bakura's hand stilled as Ryou gently lowered his head and closed his lips over the fork in the former's hand. And then, Ryou was sitting upright again, licking a bit of the white cream on the corner of his mouth with the tip of a pink tongue.

"Hmm. Passable," Ryou muttered as he dabbed the excess cake away with a napkin.

Bakura could barely hear Kyouko's screams of delight, and she was only sitting right next to him.

Shortly after finishing the cake, the younger of the Bakura family and the lone Youtai laid around the sofas as Ryou went into the kitchenette to pour some tea.

"Let me sit there, Daddy," Kyouko ordered as she clambered up onto Ryou when he returned to sit and hand Bakura a cup. She made herself comfortable on her father's lap. Ryou absentmindedly patted her head in response, apparently now accustomed to the weight.

Bakura stared at the sight, a slight twitch working at the corner of his mouth.

"Ji-chan! Ji-chan!"

"Hm?"

"Where are you going with Daddy later, ji-chan?" Kyouko asked. "When I go stay with Jounouchi-san, where are you and Daddy going?"

"Yes. Where is it, Bakura-san?"

Bakura sat up with a grin, setting down his mug on the table. "Remember that seafood restaurant that we went to?"

Ryou frowned. "Which restaurant?" Kyouko likewise cocked her head.

Bakura motioned his hands in a windmill fashion. "You know! You called me and said that you wanted to talk about things, and at the end of the day, you let me back up in here again?"

The frown persisted. "You actually remembered the specific restaurant up until now?"

"…Yeah."

Well. That was slightly disappointing.

* * *

"Gift time, gift time!" Kyouko hollered as she began to run around in circles around the table. "I'll go get mine!" There was a pitter-patter of excited footsteps, and then the two adults were the only people left in the room.

"Great kid," Bakura murmured. "Damn, I wish I could have one like her one day."

"I'm not sure how Kyouko-chan will react to that," Ryou replied quietly.

Bakura turned to face him, but then quickly adverted his eyes again. He hadn't been quite able to hold eye contact with the guy after the whole cake thing. The restaurant bust was a minus, and added together, it was just plain awkward looking at Ryou now. He wasn't really sure why. All he knew was that in that split second, a feeling of _something—_

"Here, Daddy! I made it for you!" Kyouko had come back out carrying a large sheet of paper a third of the size that she was in her tiny fists. "Look at it, look at it!"

"Oh?" Ryou carefully took the sheet from her and placed it flat on the table so Bakura could see as well. "Thank you. Kyouko-chan. Daddy's very happy." And he did look happy, Bakura realized when he snuck a peek over to the man. There was a genuine smile on the man's face, and Bakura wondered if he would have the same reaction when he saw Bakura's gift—

"It's a picture of us!" Kyouko explained importantly. She pointed a small finger to a glamorized picture of a figure with large, uneven circular eyes in a dress at the center of the paper. "See? That's me!"

"I see," Ryou said softly.

"And that's Daddy!" Kyouko pointed to a smiling stick figure of a man on the left side, which had a lot less detail than the drawing of the girl.

"Mhmm…"

"And there's ji-chan!"

"Oh?"

"Really?" Bakura immediately scrambled closer for a better look. There he was, with the same amount of detail as Ryou, with crazy triangular shapes for hair, a "V" shape for his eyebrows, and a dark, down-turning slash for his mouth. "Oh. Wow… Wow," he repeated.

"It looks a lot like your ji-chan, Kyouko-chan."

Bakura shot Ryou a good-natured dirty look, but was actually rather worried on the inside. Kyouko had given Ryou a drawing of the three of them. And his own gift was—

"Right?" Kyouko grinned.

"Daddy will put this up on the refrigerator, okay?" Ryou asked as he stood up with the paper. "Then I can see it every day."

"No, no!" Kyouko objected with wide swings of her arms in protest. "Don't put it there!"

"Why not?"

"Put it on your desk at work, Daddy! It looks so empty. This way everybody'll know who we are!"

"…Alright. Daddy will pack it in his briefcase for tomorrow then." Ryou moved to the sofa where the leather case was sitting. "I'll keep it safe."

"Yay!"

"Not yet," Bakura said hurriedly. "There's one more."

Ryou stilled. "I thought I told you not to get anything for me, Bakura-san." Bakura couldn't exactly put on a finger on the tone Ryou had in his voice.

"You told me not to buy you anything. I didn't. I made this." Bakura undid the clasps of his bag and pulled out a folder. Feeling extremely embarrassed now, he quickly pushed it into Ryou's hands.

"Ooh! What is it?" Kyouko asked, her pigtailed head excitedly bopping from side to side for a good look as Ryou opened the folder.

It was a picture of Ryou. More specifically, it was Bakura's second picture of him— the same one that he had began at the hotel right after the Nanase Concert, but of course, now complete.

It was another head shot. Softened outline, straight nose, nicely-shaped lips, flawlessly vivid eyes.

Bakura wringed his hands together. "How is it? It still might not be one hundred percent accurate because I had to draw this all in one night and I couldn't completely do it from memory and the only reference I had was my video for the Sunshine Nursery School Semi-Annual Athletic Competition—" Bakura immediately shut up, because at this point, even he knew when he was starting to babble too much.

Ryou didn't answer him. He looked up from the drawing after several long moments to face Bakura, but there was no discernable expression on his face. Finally, he opened his mouth to say _something—_

_Brrrrrrrr. Brrrrrrrr._

Ryou set down the folder to walk over to the counter adjacent to the kitchenette to pick up the phone.

"Hello?" After listening to whatever response was on the other line, Ryou moved so that his back faced Bakura and Kyouko. Meanwhile, Kyouko scurried a little closer to the still waiting Bakura.

"I think it's awesome, ji-chan! Daddy's eyes are perfect! Did it take you a long time?"

"…About three hours," Bakura answered vaguely. God damn it, he wanted to know Ryou's reaction. _Stupid call interrupting them—_ He distractedly stuck a finger in his mouth, scowling as he bit into it hard.

"Ji-chan! What happened to your fingers? They look like they hurt—"

"What was the call about?" Bakura asked point-blank when Ryou set the phone back into its cradle.

"Yamashita-san called."

"_Who_?"

Ryou gave him a withering look. "She came by a couple of times before. She's one of my colleagues."

Yamashita. Sawara. What-the-hell-was-her-face Akiko and her little companion. All the rest of them. "So? What the fuck did she want?" He was allowed to be rude, wasn't he?

"Ji-chan! Potty mouth!"

There was a warning glance in Ryou's eyes now. "She called to say that she and a few other of my coworkers put together a reservation at a restaurant to celebrate my birthday."

"Oh. That's it?" The tight, invisible clench over Bakura's chest dissipated.

Ryou pursed his lips, perhaps expecting a different reaction. "What do you mean?"

"You're not going, so it doesn't matter." Ryou opened his mouth to reply to that, but Bakura cut him off. "How did they even know it was your birthday today? Did you _tell _them?" He couldn't help but let some contempt leak into his acidic tone.

Ryou was outright frowning now. "They asked why I was leaving early. I couldn't lie to them."

Bakura could feel a twitch forming in his left arm as he clenched his fists. "You should've. Today's not _their_ day."

"No, it's _mine_," Ryou replied. He exhaled. "I won't tell them 'no' when they already planned it, Bakura-san. That would be very rude of me."

Well, it wasn't like Ryou had never been impolite before. Bakura had been a victim of the man's disrespect for months before they got to where they were now… wherever that was. Despite that, Bakura ground his teeth together in distaste. He wasn't liking where this was going.

"If you go, how about me?"

"You're invited, too, Bakura-san." Ryou dropped his voice into a mutter. "Oddly enough."

"That's not what I meant—I'm not fucking going either way. I was talking about our dinner."

"We can always have that afterwards," Ryou said patiently.

"No! How's that fair?"

"Why isn't it?"

"Why do you _have_ to go? Do they mean that much to you?" Bakura suddenly blurted out.

"They're my coworkers—"

"But I'm your— your neighbor!" Bakura faltered at that crucial moment in his speech, smacking his fist against the cushioned back of the sofa he sat on.

As numbness set in his hand, Bakura's mouth turned into a leer.

Right. Just the _neighbor_.

"If you're going to be like this, Youtai Bakura, _fine_. I can play along. I've known them longer."

Yes. Ryou had been working at Satou Prep far longer than he and Bakura had known each other.

Bakura began to take in short, hurried breaths, his hands twitching uncontrollably. He wanted to shoot back that they may have known Ryou longer, but how much did they really know about him? But no matter how hard he tried, the lump growing in his throat made it impossible to get any retort out.

'All their fault, all their fault,' Bakura hissed to himself. 'Everything was perfect—everything was going according to plan, and then they had to go fuck that up…'

Everything had had order. Serenity.

They'll be sorry.

"If you don't want to accompany me, I can go by myself, and pick you up for our dinner later—"

"No." Bakura's voice sounded almost nothing like its usual timbre.

"Bakura-san, I've already told you that I won't reject their—"

"I changed my mind—I'm going with you. You're not going by yourself." Bakura stood up with not-quite-steady legs. "I'm going with you."

Why?

Because Bakura was mad, that's why. And as anyone knows, when Bakura gets mad, he gets even.

Bakura returned to his own apartment shortly after to get ready. Ryou's lovely colleagues had decided to choose an expensive, fancy French restaurant to host their little fête— the exact kind of place that Bakura steered clear of normally.

"Lovely, lovely, lovely," Bakura muttered to himself as he drew open his closet door with a loud, satisfying smacking sound. He grabbed for the clothes that he had told himself he probably wouldn't wear again until his own wedding—as _if—_ and threw them on his futon.

He was pretty certain that he was only invited as a formality; there was no lost love between him and Ryou's coworkers, he was sure. He _had_ basically printed himself as a slightly deranged, sullen maniac to them from their visits to 601.

"Their mistake," Bakura said out loud. He'd make sure to give as wide a berth between them and Ryou as humanly or inhumanly possible. "You won't even get close to Ryou," he continued as he stripped off his shirt and jeans. "Not as long I'm there. Ha. Regretting it? You should be." He muttered loudly as he clumsily did his tie. "Won't even get close."

But how?

* * *

As the little girl had mentioned before, Kyouko would have to stay with Jounouchi when the two adults finally leave. Even with the little unwelcome addition of Ryou's _other _birthday celebration, the babysitting plan went unchanged.

Bakura's temperament had surprisingly cooled a bit in the short moment that he had used to go change his clothes and returning. Perhaps it was the unexplainable glee that was starting to simmer deep inside— the idea that he was about to pull off one of his greatest plans in history—

"Don't worry about it! I look after a kid twice Kyouko-chan's age all the time!" Jounouchi waved his hand with an air of dismissal as the Bakura family and the only Youtai stood before his door. The blond man grinned at the adults' attire. " Really. Take as long as you guys want, dudes. I understand _completely_."

Bakura didn't understand at all, and was about to say so, too, except Ryou broke in.

"In any case, thank you very much, Jounouchi-san." Ryou gave a quick bow, the length of his tie swishing gracefully. "Bakura-san and I are very grateful."

"I said it's no problem at all," Jounouchi said reassuringly.

"Bye-bye then, Daddy! Ji-chan!" Kyouko waved enthusiastically to the two as she skipped over the threshold to stand next to Jounouchi. "Don't stay out too late."

"Aww, let them do what they want," Jounouchi said to Kyouko with a grin. Then he turned to face the two adults. "Have fun."

Hmm. Bakura still didn't understand.

"Are you sure you want to come with me, Bakura-san?" Ryou asked as they rode the elevator down to the lobby.

"Yes." He had already said so; why the hell did Ryou keep asking?

"It's just that you don't seem very inclined to the idea…" Bakura whirled his head around with a look of stunned horror. "You were talking out loud again," the man explained.

"…Oh."

"…I wish that I could find a more eloquent way to say this, but…please behave yourself."

"Or what are you going to do?" Bakura questioned in reply. "Punish me?" he added before realizing it.

"…Sometimes I wonder if you say such things on purpose, Bakura-san." Ryou glanced over at him with another one of his infamous expressionless expressions.

Bakura blinked and looked away. "No," he finally managed to sputter out. "No, I don't."

Ryou tapped his foot against the tiled floor.

Bakura had actually never sat in Ryou's car before. It was a nice red color. Pretty.

"Come along, Bakura-san," Ryou said briskly as the two walked over to where it was parked. Bakura quit admiring it and obediently climbed inside.

It was rather interesting, seeing Ryou drive. The man followed all driving procedures—hands at the wheel at the proper clock-position, feet planted firmly on whatever they were supposed to be planted on— Bakura wasn't too familiar with the ways of a vehicle, having been driven around for his childhood and taken mass transportation for the majority of his adult life.

"…You wear glasses?" Bakura stared at the thin, rectangular silver frames Ryou currently had perched over his thin nose, intrigued by this piece of trivia. "I didn't know that!"

Ryou looked kind of funny in them, but not in an odd way or anything, Bakura told himself distractedly—'It's more like cute—'

"Yes. I'm nearsighted. I just wear them when I drive."

"Really? Can I see them?" Bakura eagerly snatched the frames away from Ryou as soon as the man hesitantly handed them over. "They're pretty weak," the man observed, lifting them up to his own eyes.

"Like I said, I only need them for driving."

"…Right."

"May I have them back now?"

Bakura handed them back.

The drive was a silent one, but not without its own merit. Bakura found strange comfort in sitting next to Ryou, even if they were doing absolutely nothing. Well, Ryou was driving and Bakura was riding, but still.

Even if they were going to a place that Bakura disliked filled with people Bakura detested.

Bakura had the perfect plan.

That made it all better.

* * *

As soon as they arrived in front of the restaurant, Bakura had to make one thing clear before taking action: "We have to leave after an hour and a half at latest," he announced rather stubbornly.

Ryou made a noncommittal noise as he slipped the silver frames off.

Bakura nodded once at the lack of negativity in the other man's response, and hurried out of the car as quickly as his numb legs could take him. Ryou followed suit, albeit much more gracefully, after carefully packing his glasses away in their case.

"Come on, Ryou." Bakura grabbed for Ryou's arm when the other man reached the sidewalk, drawing him closer to him.

Warm. Very warm.

The other man made a sound of surprise, but did not break away. He simply gave a surprised glance over to his companion. Bakura smiled in response. "Hurry."

"Bakura-sensei! You're here!" There was a loud clattering of chairs in a rather large table near the back of the restaurant as the other guests stood up to greet the couple. "Y-Youtai-san."

"Humph."

"Hello," Ryou greeted, waving the arm not currently held hostage by Bakura's grip. People were staring at that. Bakura could feel the uncertainty in their eyes.

"S-sit down," one of the ladies said, gesturing to a spot in front of them. From the looks of it, there was quite a fight to determine who would get the closest seat to the resident angel-descended-on-earth.

Ryou moved to sit down, with Bakura right at his wake. The man in the red scowled, and the young lady that formerly occupied one of the seats next to Ryou squeaked and backed off.

Bakura's grin was feral.

As one could see, this was Bakura's master plan.

This whole thing started out with touch, you see.

It might have been for intimidation purposes. With the victim being a touch-phobic Ryou. But that was a long time ago.

It was sort of wrong, as in, not a very valid thing to do to someone who had had haphephobia. But Bakura knew what he was doing…so that made it a-okay. Right?

Bakura knew that there were few people that Ryou was comfortable with touching without the slightest flinch, without the smallest repercussion. In fact, the number was so low that he could count it with two fingers.

Kyouko, that was one. She was Ryou's kid after all, and that was what Bakura had saddled up to Ryou for.

But also Bakura himself— the shoddy therapist and inhospitable neighbor.

The idea that Ryou had become accustomed to his presence, so accustomed that he would voluntarily touch Bakura's arm at times, sent a bubbly and smug feeling coursing through him.

It made him happy.

A few of the others gave each other glances, as if they were talking to each other with their eyes darting back from Bakura's hold on Ryou and each other.

"Kuroda was right!" a young woman whispered frantically.

"No, I still don't believe it!"

"Well, the proof is right in front of you! That's why we invited _him_, remember—?"

Ryou sat up straight. "I would really like to thank you all for inviting us tonight," he began. The twittering silenced itself to listen. "It's very kind of you all to create such a…surprise for me."

"Oh, it's no problem at all!" one cried.

"We're just happy you like it!"

"It's expected!" another gushed.

"Humph," Bakura grunted again.

There was a very fancy wine involved, but Ryou, and not just Bakura, declined. Odd. Bakura would have thought that he might have taken some just to please them.

Ryou didn't give a single clue that he might be uncomfortable with Bakura's hand over his forearm for quite a while. This emboldened Bakura to such an extent that he went further.

He began to lean closer when Ryou or another person spoke, occasionally even touching the man's back. Ryou was rather stiff at first, but he relaxed after a few grazes across the fabric of the back of his sky-blue shirt.

He began to whisper in Ryou's ear so that others couldn't hear what he was saying. They were probably better off that way.

He glared at people when they spoke, so they didn't speak much, and concentrated on their expensive French dinner instead. Unfortunately, food couldn't stop their mouths forever, and soon, the food was gone and the trifles of beautifully wrapped presents were revealed. Bakura leaned in again for what was probably the twelfth time that night. "Half an hour left," he muttered, tapping at the face of Ryou's watch, which was conveniently on his side. Ryou didn't say anything in response, but simply very gently touched Bakura's tapping hand with a light brush of his own fingertips.

At that, the whole world seemed to relieve itself of a little pain.

"Did you see that? And the way he kept…_leaning over_?"

"I did! I _did_!"

"There is something _totall_y going on between them—"

Bakura was a bit too distracted by the time to listen in on the conversation, but he was nosily interested in what kind of woefully inadequate gifts Ryou's lovely colleagues had gotten for their much-worshipped coworker—

Three different kinds of very expensive cologne, two fancy ties, and one dress for Kyouko later, Bakura felt that his own gift still clearly took first place in terms of value. Ryou accepted the presents graciously, noting a thank-you for every gift pushed into his arms.

Bakura glanced at Ryou's watch again after the hubbub died down a bit, and was happy to note that it was just about time for them to leave. Just as he was about to push back his chair, however, the conversation that had somehow managed to manifest started crossing uncharted waters.

The topic, which had originally been about work, had somehow drifted out to family matters. Bakura bristled at the touchy subject— gods knew how Ryou reacted to those kinds of questions after all, and wasn't that only supposed to be between Ryou, Kyouko, and himself?

"Kyouko-chan's so energetic. Isn't it draining for a single parent to raise her?" a bolder young lady, perhaps after taking some liquid courage in the wine glass in her smooth, manicured hand, asked with a hiccup.

Time was up, but hell would freeze over if Bakura didn't fit in the last word. "I help," he spat, not noticing that he was holding onto his fork rather threateningly. The others shivered at the tone, and began to give warning elbow jabs and glances over to their inebriated coworker.

"Youtai-san is just a neighbor, after all," the woman continued with a flip of her perfectly straight hair. "Kyouko-chan should have a _female_ role model somewhere."

"We've been raising her _fine_!" Bakura was beginning to raise his voice. He smacked the non-pronged end of his fork on the table twice. The others flinched with every 'bang' sound.

Time. It was time to go—

Blood was pounding in the man's ears. He could feel a heat flushing over his cheeks. His bitten fingers were curled up against his palm. He felt a little more than just dizzy as a rush of indignation coursed through his mind. And then—

It was all gone, because there was an odd sensation traveling over the leg closest to Ryou. The older man was staring straight ahead, and from the front, no one could see where his limbs were, but that was a completely different story to Bakura.

Ryou's hand was absentmindedly touching his thigh, making calming strokes up and down Bakura's completely still upper leg. There were times when the man's fingertips would brush just a little higher up than usual, and that caused Bakura to shut down almost completely.

He was beginning to flush for a completely different reason, but no verbal response was deciding to come out of his mouth. Yes, Ryou was doing it to calm him, but Bakura felt very strange nonetheless. Thoughts of leaving seemed to be wiped away completely, because why would he want to leave when it felt so good right now—?

Bakura just barely noticed the extravagantly decorated chocolate cake revealed before them after the others managed to hush down the drunken woman and apologize profusely to Ryou, but _did_ notice when the pleasurable feeling disappeared. He looked up from his trance.

"Here, Bakura-san." Ryou broke through the buzz with a piece of cake on a plate. Bakura blinked. Ryou was offering him the first slice. He took it numbly even though he had absolutely no appetite for it.

Ryou had actually given him something. He had _actually_ given him something.

"Thanks," he croaked out.

Ryou tilted his head slightly over to his side. "Even if you feel like you can't finish all of it, please try at least a little bit. I know you've already had cake, but…" he murmured in a whisper.

Bakura was too distracted by the strands of Ryou's hair that brushed against his cheek during the physical action of leaning over, to what Ryou was actually saying.

And then it was over, and everyone filed out of the restaurant and into the night. Ryou bid everyone farewell under the awning as an unexpected heavy rain poured right in front of them. If anyone wished to offer Ryou an umbrella, they certainly didn't after seeing Bakura's scowl, and so that was that.

Bakura wasn't feeling very well again. As Ryou was finishing telling his fan girls that he love them—at least, according to Bakura's view— Bakura stood to the side in the rain, a bit queasy.

Three hours that he was never going to get back. They spent a total of three hours there. Twice as long as he had anticipated. And all because he couldn't remember why he wanted to leave when Ryou could simply sit next to him stroking his thigh—

He had completely lost track of time.

It was all solemnly alarming.

"It's late," Ryou remarked when the last guest left. Bakura tried to make some eye contact but found that he couldn't. "…Thank you for staying as long as you did, Bakura-san. I appreciate it."

Bakura didn't reply back.

The reason for his extended stay was too embarrassing.

"Where do you want to go now?"

"You said it yourself. It's late," Bakura muttered.

"…So you no longer want to eat?"

Bakura didn't answer the question. He simply let the rain fall over him.

"…Let's return home then."

It was only when they reached the sixth floor of their apartment building when Bakura finally spoke up. "Stay with me," he said loudly. Ryou turned away from Jounouchi's doorbell to face him. "If I don't get a dinner, you should at least come over for a moment." Bakura pointed over to 603. "Don't pick up your kid yet. We can eat at my place."

Ryou nodded.

Bakura felt distant as he walked over to his kitchenette without bothering to change out of his wet clothing. He took out two containers of instant noodles. "Sit where you want," he told Ryou. Ryou did, leaving his own lightly wet jacket on. There was complete silence as Bakura boiled a pot of water over his stove, his drenched clothes making a small puddle around him.

Three minutes later, Bakura handed Ryou his noodles and a pair of chopsticks, and the two began to eat.

Fifteen minutes after that, Bakura set down his Styrofoam cup. Ryou had long since finished. Perhaps he found it wrong to think about leaving before Bakura finished. Bakura stood, picked up both of the empty containers and pairs of utensils, and disposed of them properly in the small kitchen area.

Ryou had better tact than to mention he was leaving at that moment, too.

Bakura didn't really want him to leave just yet. Yet how long could he hold him here?

"Beer?" Ryou looked up to glance at Bakura from his perfectly straight-back, hands-folded-together position.

Something flitted across the sitting man's features. A past conversation's remnants drifting by Bakura's mind gave a silent warning about Ryou and drinking, but Bakura found that he was too drained to try to remember it now. "…Perhaps just one wouldn't do any damage," Ryou finally said, uneasily receiving the can and glass. Bakura set down the other cans and his own glass on the table in front of them, and finally opened one himself as he sat back against the squeaky sofa.

Even if the beer was just to keep him company, Bakura appreciated Ryou's accepting gesture to not go just yet. He noticed absentmindedly that Ryou drank very slowly, very hesitantly.

Bakura found that he had grown tired of the silence by his third can. "Let's play a game," he announced just a little tipsily, turning to a slightly flushing Ryou, who had barely finished his first. "Rock-paper-scissors! Whoever loses drinks a shot and tells the other a secret!"

One side of Ryou's mouth lifted up in a strange half-smile, nodding along. "What counts as a secret?"

Bakura thought about it for a moment. "Whatever we haven't told each other before."

"…But how would one person know if the other's lying, though?"

"Find proof for it," Bakura answered. "We need to prove it."

"But how would you know if the proof is real?" Ryou asked.

"I wouldn't lie to you, Ryou," Bakura chortled, shoving Ryou's shoulder. "You know that." He laughed for a few seconds, but then frowned and pointed accusingly at Ryou. "Would you lie to me?"

"No." Ryou shook his head, tipping back his head to drink down the rest of his can. Setting it down loudly on the table, he bobbed his head again. "Wait." He raised up an index finger. "But what we say stays between us. No telling other people."

Bakura started laughing again at the uncharacteristically loose nature of Ryou's reply. "I know that! Okay—let's start. Rock-paper-scissors…"

They played for several minutes, and each time, Ryou would win. The man would smile thinly, pour a glass with unsteady fingers, and push it into Bakura's outstretched hand as Bakura began recounting stories about work and home that he had never told anyone else. He even showed him the scar on his elbow that he got from accidentally chipping off the wing of one of his boss's many prized dragon statues at Kaiba Corp. Most of the stories Ryou found rather funny, because he would laugh quietly as he continued drinking as well, despite that not being in the rules.

"Oh! I lost," Ryou observed after their latest match off. "Hmm." He rested his head against the curve of the sofa's back after downing a shot. "What to say…?"

Bakura wasn't too intoxicated, even after all those rounds. He was a strong drinker, and he still knew what he was doing to an extent. Yet, that extent didn't cover the fact of noticing that Ryou didn't act too much like his regular self after just two cans…

"Whatever you want!" Bakura replied gallantly, throwing out his arms. "Whatever you want to say."

"Alright… I know why you were uncomfortable at the restaurant tonight…" Ryou announced, nodding slowly as he hunched over to open another can.

Bakura frowned drunkenly. "You know…?" Muted warning bells began to sound, but the alcohol had numbed down any such thing.

"Yes, I know… You thought that I didn't notice, but I _know_. I know why." Ryou said, smiling again.

"I bet you don't!" Bakura objected, turning up his chin in defiance. "Tell me."

"You…" Ryou paused, the bizarre smile growing slightly wider. "…Don't like my coworkers," he finished with a flouish. "Am I right?"

"That's not a secret!" Bakura laughed, smacking Ryou's shoulder. "That one doesn't count! No, it doesn't count! Do it over."

"Do it over? Okay…" Ryou didn't seem up to refuse. "Then…I'll tell you about Kyouko's mother. I don't think I talked about her much. How about that?"

"…What?" Bakura frowned. There was something important with what Ryou was about to tell him. He knew that he had been thinking about it himself for quite a while already… What was it again?

"We met when I was in…university," Ryou began, tapping his chin in thought. "She was very pretty."

"'Pretty?'" Bakura repeated faintly. Ryou nodded thoughtfully. "…You had lots of classes together?"

Ryou laughed again. "I never said that she _went _to my university. _She_ just finished high school and never went further. No one ever cared what _I_ did in school, anyway. I met her _outside_ of university. At a bar somewhere."

"A bar?"

"Yes, so stop repeating what I say. You sound drunk," Ryou ordered, his own flushing face not exactly saying otherwise about himself. "Now listen. We met at a bar one night. We went on our own paths the next day. But then she got pregnant." Ryou's eyes stared off into space.

No. This couldn't be right.

"I told her not to give the baby up, and she agreed to keep it as long as I supported them …So then she thought of the first name that came to her: 'Kyouko.' Simple. Easy to remember." Ryou nodded to himself as he continued. "We didn't want to get married, because we had our own lives, even with a child…" He smiled oddly. "I helped raise Kyouko for the first two years, but then her mother just started wanting child support.

"Three more years after that, she disappeared, and the courts gave Kyouko to me." Ryou seemed to sober up just for a moment. "I still wonder if they made a mistake, giving me responsibility for a child… After that, I met you." And then, the moment was gone. "The end," Ryou finished. He suddenly chuckled, as if he was laughing at a joke that only he seemed to understand.

Bakura wasn't laughing now.

Things seemed to be falling apart over his ears.

No. This wasn't how it was supposed to be at all.

Bakura was not supposed to be hearing this.

"Ryou. Stop lying to me," Bakura said with a scowl, finally able to put together a coherent thought. "I don't like it."

"I'm not lying," Ryou protested with a frown as he jerkily poured himself another glass. "I said I wouldn't."

"Then you've had too much to drink," Bakura snapped, the soft throb of a headache slowly beginning to pound away. "Put that down." He leaned over to Ryou and snatched the glass out of his hand. Ryou made a sound of objection, reaching for it again. "Stop it! You're drunk, and you don't know what you're saying!" Bakura yelled louder than necessary, setting down the glass with a hostile movement. "I-I need to know the truth. Tell me the truth."

"That is the truth," Ryou said plainly. Innocently. "Why don't you believe it? Kyouko is proof, isn't she?"

_Bakura wasn't the first one after all._

"How could you and her have had a _kid_?" Bakura snapped, digging his fingers into the sofa's armrest. "You were haphephobic! You _said_ you were! I _know_ you were!"

"I was," Ryou agreed, still with that smile on his face. "But I found out that I didn't mind people touching me so much when I drank." He let out a soft giggle, an actual _giggle_. "I drank a lot! I told you! Don't you remember me telling you? See? Proof."

Bakura couldn't breathe. He was finding it all too much to take in at once. He tried to remember. Yes, Ryou had in fact told him he used to do so, and that he had only stopped when Kyouko came along…

"It was only after meeting you, Bakura, that it became really bad again…" Ryou murmured. "You made me think of too many bad memories. You made me feel so guilty. It was unbearable at first, not being able to just let it all wash away… I understand why my mother did it…I do, really." Ryou clasped his hands around his elbows, beginning to rock back and forth.

Ryou's words hurt, because they made Bakura think of too many bad memories as well. He didn't want to hear anymore. Why did Ryou keep talking?

"But then I told myself that raising Kyouko was the most important thing in my life, and realized that you weren't so bad after all… You even helped me get over the fear, all without letting me get close to one bottle, so that I could help Kyouko and interact with others normally again." That smile that had been on Ryou's face slowly melted away. "But you know, drinking, back when I did it, was the only time I could stand touching people." Ryou sounded rather unhappy as he said that.

He didn't want to hear this. This was it. This was his worst fear being uttered out loud. Bakura began to shiver, trying hard to breathe in much needed oxygen. He could no longer feel the springs of his couch from underneath him; non-alcoholic related numbness had sunken too far in. He closed his eyes, and wished vehemently that this was all a dream, that he was in Kaiba Corp right now and sneaking a nap at his work desk—

"It was just fooling around. Whoever I found attractive. Didn't matter if it was a man or a woman at all…" Bakura could feel the scowl on Ryou's face as the former shook his head wildly, clenching at his damp, uncomfortable, expensive, and ruined shirt. "What are you doing?"

"I don't believe it." Bakura's voice was wavering, and no, he was not listening to any of this, because none of this was _real_. He didn't even hear the last part of what Ryou had just told him, which was _good_—

"You don't?" Ryou asked mildly.

Why did he sound so _calm_? It was as if he didn't seem to understand why this was important at all.

'_How could he?' _a surprisingly sane and serene voice wondered aloud in Bakura's mind. _'It's not like you ever told him why it's supposed to be important. Do _you_ know why it is important yet?'_

Did he?

"No."

'_Don't you think you should know?' _the voice pondered. _'Should I show you?'_

"Which part? The last part?" Ryou questioned.

"Yes," Bakura replied softly to the voice. "Show me."

"Alright. I can prove that."

Ryou leaned over, tipped a stunned Bakura's chin down, and kissed him on the lips.

* * *

**Author's Note: **Shocked? I hope so. Ahahaha.

There were a lot of theories from the lovely reviewers about exactly how could Kyouko exist. Some were closer to the 'truth' than others, but they were all very interesting to read about. **Unfortunately, there was one who did not sign in/ have a FF account, so I could not reply back**. The 'truth,' which was made up in my story plans so long ago that I really can't remember when, has to—sorry about this— be carefully digested. Hope it doesn't cause heartburn.

The poll on my profile about the details of explicit scenes remains, but not for long. Also on my profile is new deviantArt and a _MANGA MUSIC VIDEO _(the latter of which is made by the wonderful **Raine20oo—**Watch it on Youtube!) created for this story!

There was exactly one reference: **YGOTAS' **Ryou telling his fan girls that he loves them. It sort of helped with Bakura's cynicism angle, I think.

Feedback is always appreciated! When did I ever not appreciate it?


	16. Fixation

The voice didn't make an audible answer. But then, even if it _did_ manage to scream out its answer while jumping up and down on figurative legs and waving signs with figurative arms, it would have been doing so in a sound-proof, pitch-black room.

…Perhaps Bakura's mind was just a _bit _too preoccupied with Ryou to continue a ridiculous conversation that the man was having with himself.

The feeling that Bakura had been kicked in the ribs a couple of times— the unspoken truth that 'you're one sick bastard, Youtai Bakura, for taking this so seriously'— was still there. However, the sensation was currently fighting for Bakura's undivided attention (and the rib-kicking pain was losing _pretty_ badly).

Bakura vaguely knew that Ryou was touching him again, and so he flushed hotly as he always did at the unexpected and rare gift; Ryou touched him with a hand, to direct Bakura's head… And with a pair of lips, to… to do whatever Ryou was doing at the moment.

…What was Ryou doing?

Youtai Bakura took precisely two and three quarters of a second to understand the current physical interaction between his neighbor and himself. It took him another one and a quarter second for his face to begin to heat up to new levels and sizzle. One whole and final second went to wiping his mental chalkboard blank. All in all, the whole reaction time took a total of five painfully slow seconds.

Quite a feat, quite a feat.

It was a kiss, Bakura realized. Ryou was giving him a god damn _kiss_.

Ryou's lips were not particularly soft, Bakura thought despite the cold numbness crawling up his body; his mouth sort of pressed against Bakura's mouth in a very emotionless, spur-of-the-moment kind of way. His gloved hand on Bakura's chin was holding his face still a little too firmly— in such a way that was almost rather uncomfortable.

Yet no question rose to the surface of the haze that was now Bakura's mind. There was no question about why Ryou was kissing him, first of all, though that would have been a really good one. There were also no questions as to how Bakura should react to it; he could hear no voice giving him Delphic ambiguous advice about how to deal with this new development in their relationship.

So Bakura did what he felt like he wanted to do; after all, voice or not, it was still all in his head: He responded. Enthusiastically. That was actually very odd in itself. When his former girlfriends tried to plant one on him back in the day, (and that was _way_ back in the day— when was the last time he had this kind of contact with someone, anyhow?), he met them with mostly flat indifference; he let them kiss him simply because it was something to do. Sometimes, Bakura had even vaguely wondered why he didn't feel any passion for the contact— maybe it was because he never cared too much for the kissers…?

But what did that say about Ryou?

No matter what that theory suggested, the mental chalkboard was currently chalk-less, and that was that.

He leaned in closer in spite of himself, and out of all things that he could have done at that moment when time stood still, he smiled unreservedly against Ryou's not-very-soft and not-very-comfortable lips. He didn't really know why he had that kind of reaction, or that he was even capable of it, but he did it just the same.

It was all rather new to him.

Bakura found himself subconsciously raising unsteady hands, thumbs sliding against smooth and high cheekbones and fingers tangling in carefully combed hair. He closed his eyes and pressed back.

For that moment, he forgot about his sadness, his petrifying fears-turned-reality, his rapidly growing, dangerous fixation on the too damn admired and handsome man in front of him—

Ryou made a very odd sound when Bakura found himself tasting alcohol that the now completely calmed man did not drink.

And then Bakura could see Ryou's entire face again because Ryou had pulled away. Quick. Ryou obscured his mouth with a gloved hand. "…I didn't expect you to do that," Ryou muttered as he slowly retracted his hand from his lips. "…_Fuck_."

The unexpected foul language that Ryou had ended with sounded so completely out of place that Bakura found his breath catching a bit unpleasantly. At the motion, it was as if all the grief from the last several minutes had accompanied the breath of needed air back into his system.

Ryou was drunk. Ryou kissed Bakura because Ryou was drunk. And _only_ because Ryou was drunk.

Bakura was not drunk. Bakura kissed Ryou back because he _liked _Ryou kissing him.

There was obviously an infinite number of problems here to be addressed.

One: Ryou had had purely physical relationships to satisfy any sexual urges, none of any relationships required anyone really getting to know him. The most prominent response to that confession that Bakura had managed to muster up was a simple one: '_Why did Ryou do that to himself?' _Surely Ryou knew that one day, someone would try to help him—someone would try to get closer and help him and want to be the first person Ryou touched willingly because that someone would have poured his soul into making Ryou's life better— Someone named Youtai Bakura, who had never done a good deed in all his existence, but had felt immediately drawn to Ryou and despite all the obstacles and fights and squabbles, held on to Ryou and all his faults anyway—

Two: Bakura was feeling…strange. He hated the idea that Ryou had done that. Bakura has always hated it, he realized, but he couldn't really explain why. But he did like Ryou kissing him. And he couldn't really explain that either.

But then Ryou had backed away as if that last feeling had had no right to exist.

What was Bakura supposed to express outwardly now? How was he supposed to react? The way the onslaught of emotions had slammed against him made thinking a very difficult process to do. Bakura struggled to do _something_, to say _something_, but nothing happened.

He tried to move his fingers just to get some circulation in them. They were feeling rather numb. They moved, but they jerked about, as if controlled by some otherworldly force.

His heart was beating too fast. Pressure began to force its way through the back of Bakura's head.

"Shit," Ryou continued in a low hiss as he stared at Bakura with narrowed, darkened eyes. "You're drunk."

Bakura blinked slowly, his vision slowly swimming in and out of focus. "'You're drunk,'" he repeated faintly, simply because that was about all he could do. Ryou was the one drunk. Bakura wasn't drunk. Ryou was the one drunk, he said to himself again, because there was no way that he would ever touch Bakura like he did otherwise.

And Ryou would touch _anyone_ if drunk, right? Anyone. No hard feelings. All a mistake, after all.

It was getting too hard to breathe.

The pressure grew stronger.

Bakura was a complete _wreck_,wasn't he? He almost giggled out loud.

Stronger.

He couldn't take it anymore.

The world went black.

* * *

Bakura woke up in very stiff clothes. He let out a soft groan and looked down. Why the hell had he gone to sleep in his funeral-slash-wedding-slash-any-fancy-occasion outfit? He tried to roll his shoulders and groaned again. "What the hell?" he rasped out loud. It felt as if he had gotten in the shower in them or something; the fabric was almost abrasive against his skin.

Bakura frowned when he stared at the ceiling. This wasn't his bedroom. He looked around. Oh. The living room.

…Why wasn't he in his bedroom?

The dull but persistent ache in the back of his head wasn't doing much wonders in helping him figure it out. He winced as he turned to face the click of a door opening and closing behind him in his apartment's hallway.

"Good morning, Bakura-san," came a quiet voice. Ryou looked down at him from the door leading into the latter's bathroom.

"…Ryou." Bakura frowned. "What the hell are you doing here?" Now this was something he had never seen before— Ryou? At his place so early in the morning?

Ryou blinked slowly. "I stayed over last night." His voice was completely devoid of emotion.

Huh. Really?

Bakura frowned again. "…You did? Where the fuck did you sleep? I gave you a futon?"

"No. I slept…next to you. I just woke up a few minutes ago. I went to wash my face." Ryou pursed his lips together. "Bakura-san. About what happened last night…"

Bakura sat up straighter as his frown deepened even further. "What happened last night?" Ryou opened his mouth but closed it again with an audible clicking of teeth. Bakura wished that the dull unease thudding away would leave, but he finally gave up and tried to think despite the ache.

A brief moment of rough lips and rough hands and the indescribable pain that had enveloped the whole of that same brief moment.

Bakura took in a deep, choking breath, and clasped his hand against his mouth at the memory.

Ryou must have thought it was a sign of immense disgust, because the man stepped back. "I'm sorry." His voice, still monotonous, was quiet. "I certainly hope it doesn't change anything between us. It didn't mean anything…"

"'It didn't mean anything,'" Bakura echoed over the flesh of his palm against his teeth. Then he bit himself angrily, too absorbed in the flooding thoughts to care too much that he was leaving violently red marks in his thin skin. _'Well, of course it didn't. What could it have meant?'_ he hissed bitterly to himself.

What could it have meant?

"Right. I took the game a little too far last night. I should've considered that you weren't in your right mind… because you were also drunk." Ryou continued hastily, looking down at his own feet. "Y-you even passed out afterwards— Very irresponsible of me, I know—"

But Bakura hadn't been drunk. And he had only went under because…well, because his mind and body couldn't take it anymore… and any loss of consciousness like that couldn't be a good sign.

"Bakura-san. Really. I didn't mean to—"

"I know. I got it," Bakura interrupted perhaps a bit too hastily, a bit too acerbically. He bit down hard on his fingers and then wrenched them away. "Stop talking about it. I don't want to talk about it anymore." He really didn't. What had happened wasn't meant to happen, after all. "Just forget about it. People do stupid things when they're drunk. I know."

Just like the time he had forced Ryou into taking off his gloves in what seemed like an eternity ago. Bakura sure was intoxicated then. But Ryou forgave him because of it.

And now Bakura should do the same.

Ryou shifted uncomfortably again. "…Right," he repeated, a bit of relief evident in his voice. "Let's not bring it up again."

Bakura didn't like that tone. In fact, there were a lot of things that were bothering him at the moment. Besides his ruined clothing chafing his skin, Bakura realized that he was feeling rather woozy; the headache was back. His limbs ached, either from waking up in an uncomfortable, rickety sofa or some other reason. He would have liked to say something, but his tongue seemed awfully heavy in his mouth right now.

"I should go. I think I've overstayed long enough." Ryou was talking again. "Jounouchi-san must be wondering what happened."

"Then go," Bakura muttered.

Ryou opened his mouth again, but then he pursed his lips, and left with a turn of his heel and nothing else. The door closed behind him with a sharp and crisp sound.

Bakura winced at the noise as he pried his sore fingers away from his teeth again and rubbed an aching hand against his temple in a last-ditch effort to ease the pain settling there. He exhaled a huff of weary air, and rested his head against the curve of the worn seat.

"Ughh," he managed, automatically bringing his fingers up to his teeth again.

Things between Bakura Ryou and him from now on were not going to be peachy. Bakura could just _feel_ it.

It was not a good feeling.

"Not going in today," Bakura mumbled out loud. He groaned as he retracted the raw fingers yet again and patted around for his phone. Squinting as he scrolled for Yuugi's name, he let out a loud sigh as he waited for his colleague to pick up.

His call was answered before the end of the first ring. "Mutou—"

"_Youtai-kun! How are you feeling?"_

Bakura told him the truth. "Like shit," he said simply. "Look. I'm not coming to work today either."

Yuugi made a sympathetic whine. _"Maybe you should go see a doctor, Youtai-kun! This is the third day in a row you've been sick, isn't it? I mean, you even threw up before—"_

Bakura felt a twang of guilt creeping in despite the aches. He wasn't sick yesterday…well, not in the way Yuugi thought that he was; it was definitely karma that made him feel like a truck had hit him today.

He closed his eyes and pursed his lips. "Yeah. I'll go see a doctor," he told Yuugi finally, just to reassure the worried man. "Bye." After disconnecting the call, Bakura opened his eyes and looked up at his ceiling. "Maybe I really oughta go to a doctor."

His unexpected blank out was worrying him.

Bakura attempted to move his legs, hoping that somehow he'll make it out the door, and winced at the sluggish movement. "No. Never mind." He sighed again.

It just wasn't natural to pass out like that, was it?

"Oh, fuck it, I'll just get him to come to me."

He lifted his phone up to eye level again— a great obstacle. Pressing a few buttons, he pushed the device against his ear. After a few rings, someone answered: _"Bakura? Why the hell are you calling? You know that I'm off duty today! I need my beauty sleep, you know."_

"Marik…" Bakura began with a growl. Then he decided it wasn't worth the effort and closed his eyes again. "…Shut the fuck up and come over."

"_How rude, Bakura!" _Marik huffed audibly over the line. There was a pause. _"Ugh, you sound just ghastly."_

"I know. So what do you think you should be doing right now?"

"…_Catching up on my beauty sleep?"_

"Fuck you, Marik!" Bakura snapped, opening his eyes to glare at the phone. "You're a god damn doctor! Visit me!"

"_I think you're getting the roles mixed up here, Bakura!" _The snarl that tore past Bakura's windpipes put a clean stop to Marik's obvious displeasure._ "Oh, alright. I'll be there soon… Ginamaru Apartments, 701, yes?"_

"No… I-I'm living in 603 now."

There was a pause. _"…In the same building?"_

"Yeah."

"_What?" _Marik squawked in shock._ "Never mind, just tell me when I get there."_

After setting down his phone, Bakura willed himself over to his closet and shucked off his clothes. Throwing them halfheartedly into a laundry basket, he changed and shuffled back to his couch. Maybe he could take a nap while he waited.

Yes, a nap sounded nice…

_Bakura was not happy. Not. Happy._

_He just knew that they were advancing. And he wanted nothing more than for them all to go away. Far away. Far enough away so that they weren't such a threat. Their camouflaging scent and clothing choices let them blend in to their surroundings too well; Ryou was at risk amid the dense foliage that surrounded him. _

_The man in question was in the middle of a large and dark forest, sitting on the forest floor, looking about uninterestedly as he stretched and blinked. Bakura was worried for him; didn't Ryou know that he was the prey? That the people hiding behind the trees— that they were the poachers?_

_Why must Bakura always do everything? Why couldn't Ryou try to do something, even if it wasn't much, just so that Bakura could worry less?_

_Despite knowing that Ryou was here and in danger, Bakura wasn't really sure about his own existence in the dream. He simply felt like a pair of eyes, unfortunately helpless to do anything about anyone— He tried to yell out to Ryou, to tell him to run while he could and take cover, but Ryou didn't seem to hear him. _

_He couldn't do anything even if he wanted to._

"_Look! There he is!" came a hushed, feminine voice amongst the verdure._

"_What's the plan?"_

"_Get him with a club!"_

_Murder! Bakura felt a large weight settle on his nonexistent chest in panic, trying harder to get Ryou's attention now. However, with no hands to shake the man's shoulders and Ryou still oddly deaf to him, it seemed for sure that the poachers were going to do Ryou in._

"_Are you crazy? I don't want to take home damaged goods!"_

"_Who said _you_ get to take him home?"_

"_Hush, we don't want him to run away! You two are making too much noise!"_

"_Let's get him with a dart!"_

"_What? No! What if it hits him in the face?"_

"_Kyaa!" came a horrified squeal. "Don't you dare hit Bakura-sensei in the face!"_

…_What?_

_Bakura would have blinked if he actually possessed a pair of eyes in this now decidedly silly dream. The poachers were…Ryou's fans. Bakura shook his figurative head slowly and narrowed figurative eyes as figurative lips curled in disgust. He strained his eyes to look deeper into the shadows._

_He could almost smell the perfume and see the short dresses and the high heels now..._

"_Bakuraaaaaa…" came a new annoying voice singing from the cover of the trees._

_Bakura felt his non-existent blood boil. They had no right to call Ryou by his last name without an honorific._

"_Bakura! I command you to rise and shine, sleepyhead!" _

"_Oh great! Now the fangirls have started invading my dreams, too…" Bakura muttered acerbically, now surprisingly able to talk._

"_What? It's me, you fool! Do I _sound_ like an eff-ing fangirl?" _

Bakura groggily opened his eyes. Marik was glaring down at him with crossed arms. "…Marik?" he questioned hesitantly.

"Because I have decided that I shall be mad at you for mistaking me for a fan girl, it is 'Doctor Ishtar' to _you_, you ungrateful prick."

Bakura grunted and let that one slide as he sat up on the couch, unconscious of the fact that his elbow supporting his weight nearly gave way when it unexpectedly jolted. "How'd you get in?"

"…You left the door unlocked. You should stop doing that, Bakura, or one day you'll find your place cleaned out of all its valuables..." Marik took a quick look around the living room. "Not like you seem to have much of those lying about for display."

Bakura grunted again. "Why are you here?"

Marik frowned. "Why, you told me to come over."

"…Oh. Right." Bakura attempted a stretch, but then thought better of it when his sore limbs threatened to pop right out of their sockets. His half-hearted movements ended in a spasm of his neck and right hand instead. "I think I'm not feeling well."

Marik's frown deepened. "Well, I can certainly see that." He put a hand on a slightly exposed hip and sniffed snootily. The tanned man cocked his head slightly to the side. "Have you noticed you're twitching, Bakura?"

"…I am?"

He was? He held out his hand in front of his bleary eyes to examine.

"I guess not— Oh, good _god_! What the _freak_ did you do to your fingers?" Without more than a confused 'Huh?' from a dazed Bakura, Marik swooped up his hand for closer inspection. "Have you been _eating _yourself?"

"_What_?"

"Look at them!" Marik cried dramatically as he pushed up the pale, lax hand for Bakura to see. "They're barely recognizable!"

Bakura scowled and swatted his hand away. "They're fine. Look, just tell me what I need to do for the …twitching. Is that all that's wrong with me?" He thought it would be a lot more serious.

Marik was staring at him now, narrowing his creepy light-colored eyes.

"What are you staring at?" Bakura snapped.

"You look awfully tense today." Bakura stared back. "_Tense_, Bakura!" Marik did not look pleased at Bakura's blank face.

Bakura was taken back by the sudden change in tone, and would have laughed if he could force out the sound. He scowled instead. "I heard you the first time. Why are you being such a nag?" the man muttered irritably. "You're giving me a—"

"Headache?" Marik finished briskly for him.

"Well… yeah."

"What else do you have there, Bakura? Heart pounding? Fatigue? Shortness of breath?" The blond made a quick 'humph' sound, his voice getting shrill. "You're not grunting 'no,' so that means I'm right, doesn't it?"

"And passing out," Bakura muttered lowly. "Let's go all out on this, why don't we?"

"You did _what_?" the blond squawked. "Oh, I think I'm going to need to sit down." Marik's long bleach blond hair flipped from side to side as he tried to look for a seat. "A place to sit," he repeated in a disgusted mutter. "You'd think it wouldn't be so freaking hard." Finally dramatically settling on the armrest of a recliner heaped with art supplies, Marik turned to face Bakura again.

Bakura disliked the look of doctorly concern on his long time friend's features. It made him feel like he couldn't take care of himself, and to hell with it, Bakura could take care of himself fine, passing out and perpetual apprehension be damned. Really, this was shaping up to be a swell idea, wasn't it, having Marik—no, _Dr. Ishtar_, was it— come over. "Once. I passed out _once_. Really, I don't know why I did— I wasn't drunk or anything—"

It was as if Marik didn't hear him, because the other man barreled right over the excuse with an oddly clipped tone. "When you told me that you had quit smoking, why did you do it?"

Bakura frowned, a bit more than annoyance crossing his features. "What the hell does that have to do with this?" He was in the middle of making excuses, after all.

"It's actually very important, Bakura." Marik sounded surprisingly grim, perhaps more serious now than in the many, many years Bakura had come to know him.

"I-I had to." Bakura had quit because Ryou had told him to. Because Ryou had said that the only way that he would let Bakura's sorry butt up into 601 was to quit for good.

A brief image of Ryou kissing him roughly flickered behind his eyes. He looked away, red in the face as he tried to scowl. He didn't really want to think about Ryou right now.

"But why?" Marik was annoyingly pressing on.

"I'm not answering that!" The scowl began to work its way up onto Bakura's face. He didn't see how telling Marik about this was going to help. "I don't like these funny questions, Marik."

"Connect the dots, Bakura!" the blond huffed. "You smoked because you were a nervous wreck if you didn't! Really, you honestly shouldn't have— it makes it worse in some people, but since it worked for you, fine— Honestly, when you told me you had quit, I was really surprised—You told me that you had to, that you found a good enough reason to!"

Bakura couldn't understand the whole first splurge of mess that Marik had said, so he simply replied to the last part: "…Yeah, I did. So?"

"So, I didn't say anything at the time because you appeared to be perfectly normal! But now—now—look at yourself! Muscle spasms! Headaches! Tiredness! Inability to breathe!" Marik sputtered as he ranted, rattling off the problems with a tap of his fingers. "Don't you see what it all adds up to?"

"No, I don't see," Bakura snapped cagily. Yes, he was having all those problems, and he supposed he would have to grudgingly give Marik some credit for finding all of that out with just a glance—

"Panic! Attack! You buffoon!" Marik exploded in three fell swoops. The man waved his arms around dramatically as he lectured on. "God damn it, you went and got yourself _addicted_ to something else and now that _that's_ apparently gone, the symptoms are back! Do you have any idea how dangerous it's gotten—that you've gone and passed out?"

Bakura blinked repeatedly to digest it all.

Marik was telling him that he had gotten addicted to something else after he had quit smoking? Smoking, which Bakura had used to calm his anxiety, to keep himself from twitching, from headaches, from experiencing meltdowns because of his constant worrying—

Then he quit and there were those few days in which all those problems and more haunted him… but then, afterwards, they stopped.

Because Bakura Ryou had finally let him in.

Was Marik suggesting that Ryou was what Bakura had grown addicted to— But that was _absurd—_ There were plenty of times from when he got to step foot into 601 to now in which those symptoms had occurred again, weren't there? It certainly had nothing to do with, with _Bakura_ _Ryou_.

"That idea's ridiculous! Unbelievable—" Bakura immediately defended himself.

But was it really?

'It _is_ believable~' a voice in his head sang.

"No, no, no…"

Bakura _had_ shifted his outlet for anxiety from focusing on smoking to focusing on Ryou. Ryou, who also gave him a fair share of headaches and pain, but also gave him a heady source of delight from time to time. Ryou, whom he had used to spend his waking moments on, so that he didn't constantly worry about needless things whenever his emotions took a turn for the worse. Ryou, whose touch he was beginning to crave…

Wasn't it always when their relationship was threatened that Bakura would feel monumentally worse about himself— his excessive pride, his fear of solitude— Whenever he and Ryou would have an argument, whenever he feared that Ryou was going to kick him out and never let him back in, whenever he felt himself misunderstood or unrightfully blamed in Ryou's eyes, whenever he saw Ryou's attention fixed on someone not on his daughter or on Bakura himself…

Whenever he thought that Ryou would stop touching him…

That would be when Bakura would find himself angry and shaken and afraid—

Oddly, the indescribable pain when Ryou began to drift away from him to obliviously share company with his ridiculous infatuated coworkers surged up again—and that moment when Ryou kissed him for the first time, but told him that it didn't really mean anything as well… The idea that he could really and _would_ really kiss anyone— those wounds haven't healed yet for some odd reason, and the hurt plagued him just like his tremors and headaches and everything else.

Bakura felt his eyes roll back slightly.

"Bakura!"

"Ryou." Bakura breathed out. "Ryou…"

"'Ryou?' What's a 'Ryou?'"

"He's not a thing! Ryou's a person!" Bakura snapped. "He's my—neighbor."

"…Your neighbor?" Marik repeated faintly.

"We're not just neighbors!" Bakura snapped and faltered. "We're also—friends, I think." Bakura caught sight of Marik's expression at that. "I mean that we are!" Bakura threw up his hands in defeat. "And that's it! Friends and that's all." He dropped his arms and muttered to himself, "That's all."

"A person named Ryou," Marik muttered slowly. He frowned. "Why does that name sound familiar? …Ryou… Bakura Ryou?"

Bakura held his breath. He had forgotten—Marik had seen Ryou before when the white haired man had gotten into that awful accident and had gone to the hospital—Yes, he remembered now. Then Ryou had screamed at him on the phone and then in person for picking up Kyouko and bringing her home because he didn't know what else he could do— And Bakura had been so hurt about that, too—

"Crap, Bakura! No wonder you were so interested in him when we spoke! So a _friend_, eh?" Marik gave Bakura a very scrutinizing kind of look none too delicately as he pulled Bakura away from wallowing in his thoughts. "Are you sure? That you're friends, I mean." Marik frowned. "Fixating on a person, of all things… I mean, it's possible that you might just _think_ of it as familiarity…"

That wasn't meant as an insult. Yet, after being momentarily stricken with surprise, a hot rush of anger went through Bakura. "What the fuck are you saying, Marik?" he asked evenly.

…Was he suggesting that Ryou, Bakura's first actively sought companion was in fact just… an obsession? That they actually had no basis for a relationship? That all those months he had spent in Ryou's company, all the times he had made Ryou's kid giggle and made Ryou smile—that they weren't…real?

"I'm just saying this for your own good, Bakura," he heard Marik snap. "Your ways of coping had never been healthy, and it's high time I put a stop to this mess—"

Oh, no, no, no. Bakura was certainly not going to take that lying down. He took in a sharp inhale. "Get the fuck out."

"What?"

"You heard me," Bakura said, voice surprisingly level. "I'm not listening to that…_bullshit_," he spat. He was starting to lose his nerve. "Go. R-right now." He inhaled deeply again, but the stifling air got caught in his throat midway and he let out a pathetic little wheeze instead. Trying again once more, he bellowed out one more, "Go!"

Marik drew himself up in a haughty stance and narrowed his eyes. "Good god, Bakura! There's no need for that kind of attitude. I am only trying to help a friend here! How dare you treat me this way!" He held up a hand for silence to stop any incoming retort from Bakura. "Never mind. I know that this will pass. Just promise me that you'll …take a break soon." Marik's expression of indignity softened slightly. "You need one."

And with that said, the blond tossed his hair back one more time, sniffed with his nose high in the air, and left.

"Is it true?" Bakura wondered out loud to himself when the door slammed dramatically behind him. "Holy shit, is Marik right? No, he's not right!" He was horrified at himself for doubting. "He's—wrong! Marik is wrong and—"

It couldn't be true.

Yet… What else could explain his ridiculous, overblown reaction to others touching Bakura Ryou? What else could explain the reason for that embarrassment of a… The image of Ryou pressing his lips against his own flickered by again, and Bakura didn't resist the urge to kick his coffee table away with a spurt of energy so that it squealed against the linoleum with protest.

Drained of energy once more, Bakura slumped back into the seat of his misshapen couch.

Should he go see Ryou? He was feeling really awful, and Ryou was always the one to make him feel better—

"No, no, no!" he shouted. That would mean that Marik was right—that the only friendship he had ever actively desired was one that was out of his control. Bakura couldn't stand for that, not when so many things were already out of his control.

The stricken hurt that he had felt when Ryou gave him that look after their kiss flared for a third time. Bakura paled. Marik had said that it wasn't a good sign that he had gone and passed out; well, of course Bakura knew that. It just seemed so much more dire when Marik said it.

Passing out after a kiss. It sounded pathetic even in Bakura's mind. It wasn't the actual kiss that caused it, but the onslaught of uncomfortable feelings afterwards. The kiss itself, when he concentrated just on that, had felt quite good, actually. Bakura felt his mood lighten at the memory. Oh, yes, he had felt very calm and sated at that moment when Ryou touched him there—

Bakura wheezed out a small, undignified whimper.

Did that mean that Marik was right?

Somehow, the day vanished in Bakura's haunted thoughts, and before he could collect himself again, night had fallen. He peeled himself off of his couch; he needed to go outside. He needed some of that fresh air that those hiker and biker types always said was good for the body—

Bakura rushed to the door and jerked it open.

He needed—

Ryou.

Ryou was standing not three meters away with Kyouko next to him. The two men stilled at the sight of each other, neither of them making a move to walk in any direction or to speak the first word of greeting. The elevator doors shut crisply behind them and effectively broke whatever silence there was.

"Ji-chan!" Kyouko cried buoyantly, her grin stretching from ear to ear on her small, round, puffy-cheeked face. Bakura was glad to use her as a distraction; if he looked at Ryou's face, then maybe the man would suspect that there was something wrong. And there was _nothing _wrong. "Are you about to come over right now to eat with Daddy and me? Only we can't watch TV tonight 'cause me and Jounouchi-san watched Zorc and Pals all night last night and when Daddy found out, he said that I can't watch TV again for fifty billion years."

"Just three days," Ryou muttered rather softly.

"Yeah, what Daddy said," Kyouko said solemnly. "Why are you standing there? Come in with us! Daddy has to make dinner and you have to help me draw another pony!" It was as if the last several tumultuous weeks had never happened for the child, as if she had just plucked another one of those perfect early August nights.

Bakura couldn't bring himself to make his usual crack about how could he be considered help when it was he who generally ended up drawing the entirety of whatever the little girl wished. He couldn't bring himself to even smile. "No. Not tonight."

"No pony?" Kyouko sounded put out. "How about a little puppy then?"

"No. I…I'm not coming over tonight." He couldn't face Ryou. Not just yet. He needed time to think things through— he needed to convince himself that Marik was wrong, wrong, wrong.

"But why?" Kyouko made a very noticeable pout. "Is it 'cause Daddy said we can't watch TV? I'm sorry—"

"It's not about that," Bakura interrupted sharply. "It's not—your fault," he said after seeing Kyouko's taken back expression at his unexpected snap.

"…It's just going to be you tonight, Bakura…san," a low voice whispered softly.

Bakura looked up to face Ryou in surprise. Ryou had been looking very guilty when they first set eyes on each other, but now appeared almost hopeful. Bakura blinked, his insides fluttering happily at the sight of the man's face and his mind relishing in Ryou's tone of voice. He liked it when Ryou sounded like that. It made him feel pleased with himself for some reason. Bakura felt his gaze single in on Ryou's mouth— it was such a pretty mouth, a perfect pinkish-red color that made him feel so good when he touched it with his own lips—

Bakura let out a gargled sound, his cheeks flushing red as he realized what he had just spent the last several seconds thinking while standing there like an idiot. "Uh?"

"My coworkers told me today that they were… very sorry about Hanawa's drunken display last night. I think that they will be too embarrassed to come around any time soon."

Hanawa must have been the young lady with the liquid courage to challenge Bakura's place in Ryou's life, he thought randomly. He felt happy for a moment, he really did. It seemed that Ryou was expecting him to be happy, too, and in any other case, Bakura would have been more than willing to live up to Ryou's expectations.

But he couldn't this time. He couldn't.

"…No. I can't."

Bakura felt awful about it later, when he found himself staring at the four corners of his living room again. Avoiding Ryou wasn't the way to go. He was determined to prove to himself that Marik was wrong. If Bakura really only kept Ryou's company because he liked Ryou touching him—_and god damn it, that was certainly not true—_ Bakura would best be able to prove it to himself by continue his friendship with Ryou.

All he would need to do is abstain from one thing, and one thing only.

He will no longer touch Ryou. He will no longer let Ryou touch him. This was the best way. The most forward, concrete way.

…_The most painful way._

The next afternoon, he bravely showed up at Ryou's door. Ryou looked very pleased to see him, and he ushered him in almost immediately. Bakura was careful not to let Ryou's fingertips brush him as he led him through the front door, however, as much as he felt that he would have enjoyed the sensation of Ryou's fingers sliding down his back…

He realized that it was those same damn exact thoughts that he needed very desperately to squash, and so he went off to distract himself by drawing for Kyouko instead. To make up for upsetting her last night, he drew three puppies, two ponies, and one large barn for them all to live in.

Ryou seemed to be walking around the room a lot during that time, as if he was looking for something. Bakura ignored it. It was safest not to meddle.

When Ryou called them over for dinner, Bakura silently and quickly helped with setting down the dishes as he had usually did, but he again made sure not to touch Ryou's arms as he maneuvered beside him to get the chopsticks, and not to let Ryou's fingers touch his as he passed the dishes to him.

Perhaps it was just Bakura's overactive imagination, but he thought that Ryou looked rather distressed that night.

Wasn't it ironic that Bakura, who used to plant himself in front of 601 to force a touch from Ryou would end up today in this sorry state where he went out of his way to make sure they had no contact?

Meanwhile, Bakura began to take out all of his confusing emotions on work instead. With every night that he went without Ryou's touch, Bakura would attempt to vent all of his frustration into his drafts for 'The King of Games: Duel Monsters' the next day at Kaiba Corp. The plan worked well enough at first— Bakura ploughed through his work with unprecedented speed. However, it was getting harder and harder to do so with every passing day— every night, Bakura would subconsciously stare at Ryou's back and wonder if it would be counterproductive if he did something—completely innocent, of course— like push that tuft of hair that kept dangling in front of Ryou's face in that odd angle to the side behind his ear while the other man continued to search for that odd missing object, or if he told the man that he had gotten some flour on his face while he was cooking and that Bakura would try to wipe it off for him with a brush of a finger—

_No_. Stop right there. Everything was almost normal again. He had to stop himself from thinking such traitorous (but damn, they were certainly nice to think about it—stop it, stop it) thoughts. Think about…the deadline. Right, the deadline was coming up in two weeks.

He sat in front of his desk in his shared cubicle now, trying to concentrate on the drawing in front of him a day before deadline. He still felt queasy. The not-touching-Ryou plan wasn't making things easier at all. He couldn't stop himself from dismissing how bad could it possibly be if he touched Ryou's arm again. Or if Ryou touched his arm. Or if Ryou touched his face. Or if Ryou kissed him again—

Bakura still wanted Ryou to touch him. Marik _was_ right—

"Youtai-kun!" Yuugi's outrageous hairstyle popped into view in the left corner of Bakura's vision. Bakura jolted as he let out a short yelp at the sudden fright as he turned to face Yuugi. The short man was looking at him with those pitying amethyst eyes, a look that he had been giving him for almost the entirety of the last two weeks since Bakura had returned to work. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean to scare you…Are you okay? You look sick again."

"I'm f-fine," Bakura sputtered, edging further away from his coworker. "Leave me alone." He set his attention back onto the drawing in front of him and frowned. This was—

"Wow! That's a really super special awesome detailed drawing, Youtai-kun!" Yuugi didn't take the hint and edged closer to see. "The Change of Heart card, right?"

The Change of Heart card indeed. A picture of a white-robed figure holding a floating heart in cupped hands with one half of the body in shadow and the other half in light, with the leathery wing of a demon and a feathery wing of an angel on the respective sides. It was detailed, certainly…The only thing odd about the figure was that it was a picture of—

Bakura shouted something and clapped his hands over the face so fast that his palms stung. It didn't help that his pencil was digging into the back of the hand underneath. "Don't look!"

Yuugi looked hurt. "…Okay. Sorry…" He gave Bakura another one of his watery, puppy-dog looks. "I wish that you'll feel better soon, Youtai-kun. I miss the old days. You were never like this before." He let out a soft sigh. "Anyway, it's still a really nice picture." Then the dejected man bowed his head and rolled away to the safety of his own desk as Bakura rubbed his rubber eraser across the picture's head until there was no evidence of Ryou's features and hair ever gracing the paper except the black shavings now scattered all over.

Bakura felt guilty as he watched him go. Yuugi was only trying to help. And so was Marik. The only thing messing everything and everyone up was Bakura himself. He has never hated himself more.

* * *

As a silent, indirect apology to Marik, Bakura decided that he will heed his advice and take a day off after deadline. He stayed at home to rest and roll about, mind neither here nor there. When he thought that he was hungry enough for lunch, Bakura padded out into the living room and made a bowl of instant noodles. Deciding to sit down on his couch and balancing his bowl carefully in one hand as he did so, he swept away all the other stuff littering the seat and sat down.

He frowned. There was something digging into the small of his back. Setting down the bowl on the worn table in front of him, Bakura turned around and lifted the back of the seat. There was a small silver cell phone there.

"What the hell?" He pulled it out and examined it. He couldn't recognize it at first, but then he turned it on. A picture of Kyouko's face appeared on the starting screen. Bakura froze.

This was Ryou's phone. "How the hell did this get here?" Ryou could have only left this here if he had been sitting here, and the only time that ever happened was when he had came over two weeks ago…

Bakura inhaled sharply. It's been over two weeks. It's been over two weeks, he repeated to himself, and yet Ryou had never thought of asking for his phone back? How was that _possible_?

Despite his original intentions to wallow it out at home for a day, Bakura picked up his windbreaker and put it on, stuffing Ryou's phone into one of the pockets. Screw "he should be resting," he just wanted an excuse to see Ryou.

When he arrived at Akechi Plaza, Bakura was starting to have doubts about this whole thing. Seriously, what was wrong with him? Coming up to Satou Prep just because he wanted to see Ryou (see since he couldn't touch)—what kind of sad sap was he turning into?

But since he was here, he might as well make the entire journey up. Bakura sighed and walked into the building. Kemo once again turned a blind eye at his presence, but the white-haired man didn't have the energy to flaunt it in the hulking security guard's presence.

Getting off of the elevator on the third floor, he blankly walked up to the front desk. "Looking for Bakura Ryou."

The young lady sitting behind the counter practically began quivering in fear. "H-hello, Youtai-san," she said slowly.

Bakura blinked. He recognized her. This was that Hanawa person. "Looking for Bakura Ryou," he repeated. He didn't care that she was one of the banes of his existence at the moment, quite frankly. He was past that stage. Besides, she and the rest of her herd hadn't been around to fuel his flames of contempt recently anyway.

"Holy _moly_! He's back!" the young man previously noted as Tanaka hissed.

"I wonder what happened this time?" one of the older ladies whispered back.

"I don't know, but I bet it totally has to do with Bakura's bad moods recently," the man known as Kuroda claimed.

"You think so?" the older woman sounded worried.

"I _know_ so," Kuroda said firmly.

"Another lover's spat?" a fourth suggested.

"I bet that this time, this guy's the one that wants to break things up and Bakura's the jilted ex-lover—"

"Oh, can it, Kobayashi. Not this again," yet another man sighed. "Lay off the American soaps, will you?"

"—Y-yes, of course. He's almost done with his first afternoon class. Let me call his classroom." Hanawa gestured towards the desk phone in front of her with a hesitant finger. "Please wait for a moment." Quickly dialing a number she seemed to know from memory, Hanawa jammed the receiver up to the side of her neck. "Hello. Bakura-sensei? Yes. This is Hanawa Kiyomi from the front desk. Um, Youtai-san is here to see you." She paused. "Oh, alright. I see. G-good bye." Hanawa returned the phone to its cradle. "He's coming out right now, Y-Youtai-san."

True to her word, Ryou appeared in the hallway leading away into the classrooms. The corners of Ryou's mouth lifted as he looked at Bakura. "Bakura-san."

"Hi, Ryou." Bakura blinked. Was he just imagining it, or was Ryou smiling at him? He shook his head. Must be his imagination. Ryou wouldn't smile at him for no reason.

"You're here on a work day. Have you finished with your deadline, then?"

"Uh, yeah. Took a day off today, actually." Oh, right. He never told Ryou about that. "Yeah," he said again rather stupidly. "Deadline was yesterday." Bakura fished out Ryou's phone from the pocket he had crammed it in. "You left your phone… at my place," he muttered. "Wanted to return it."

"Are they splitting?"

"What? What gave you that idea?"

"Aha! I told you Bakura's the jilted ex-lover—"

"Shut! _Up_! Kobayashi!"

"_You _stuff it!" Kobayashi sounded very indignant that his preposterous theory was always being ridiculed. "Why else would this guy turn up at his work to return the phone when he could do it after work— you heard how Bakura goes over to that guy Youtai's place, apparently—"

"Damn your poisoned lips! Shh! I wanna hear them talk!"

"…Well, thank you, then." Ryou stepped forwards to take the small device from Bakura, moving to take the phone out of the other man's hand. Bakura froze, and then dropped it into Ryou's hand right as the man was about to touch his wrist.

"Er…here."

Bakura watched as Ryou nearly fumbled; apparently, the man hadn't been expecting Bakura to so haphazardly toss it over like that.

And then something changed. Ryou was gripping the phone a little too tightly in his gloved hand. Bakura looked up at Ryou's face, confused. The man stared back at him…looking… angry. Angry like Bakura had never seen before. His whole figure had turned steely straight, and there was nothing welcoming left on Ryou's features.

"…Uh." What just happened?

"…We need to talk," Ryou hissed caustically when it seemed that the man could finally pry his lips open to speak. There was an audible clenching noise as he clutched his phone a little tighter.

"What…?"

"Come with me." Ryou grabbed for Bakura's upper arm despite the man's protests and commenced dragging him towards the elevator. "I do not know how long I will be gone. Perhaps for a while. Maybe the entire day," he snarled to his coworkers in short, sharp incomplete sentences. "I apologize for any inconvenience," he finished, not sounding very apologetic.

Bakura was pushed into the elevator, and he just managed to catch everyone's shocked expression before the doors closed in front of them.

* * *

Ryou neither let go nor spoke a single word as they rode down the lift to the lobby. Bakura kept trying to wring his arm free (even now, he didn't dare touch Ryou) as numbness began to set in. Whether that was an effect of Ryou touching him for the sake of touching or because Ryou was slowly cutting off circulation to that limb, Bakura wasn't sure. He just knew that something was wrong, and that he was feeling very anxious.

"What the _fuck_, Ryou? What's wrong with you?"

Ryou didn't answer him. Instead, the man stared at the chrome doors in front of them, never once bothering to turn to face and acknowledge Bakura's frantic questioning. After the initial shock passed, Bakura began to get angry. Why wasn't Ryou talking? What was the meaning of all of this?

Ryou dragged him off to an exit that Bakura realized led to a parking lot connected to the building. Stopping at a clearance away from any cars about ten meters from the door they had just come from, Ryou finally pushed Bakura away. The other man nearly lost his balance, and he turned to face his oddly acting neighbor. "What the fuck, Ryou?" Bakura screamed, now having lost his patience. "Why the hell did you take me here?"

Ryou bared his teeth, his eyes wide and crazed. "Why?" he sputtered. "So that I can do this!" And suddenly, he lunged.

The next thing Bakura knew, he had been knocked into a stone pillar supporting the concrete roof over their heads and the parking level above them. Bakura shrieked in pain— that hurt like hell— Ryou had never touched him like this—touching him so that instead of feeling that odd sense of pleasure, that it hurt so bad he felt like crying instead—

"There's no need to take your discomfort so far, Youtai Bakura!" Ryou snarled, standing a meter or so in front of the man now stumbling away from the pillar. "I already said that I didn't mean to kiss you!"

And of course hearing those words again made Bakura even more upset. "What the fuck!" the man shouted after he physically recovered, shoving Ryou back with his own hands. "What discomfort?" He didn't care that he had just broken his promise. This was insane, what Ryou was doing—

Ryou held his ground and answered back with another harsh shove, pushing Bakura back against the pillar. "You haven't been the same for the past two weeks ever since then! At first, I thought that it was because you were distracted by your deadline— But now it's passed, and you're still avoiding me!"

"I've only avoided _touching _you!" Bakura screamed. "Stop doing that! Quit pushing me—I don't like you touching me like that—"

Bakura knew that deep down that he wanted Ryou to touch him gently, to _maybe kiss _him roughly—He's known for a while. But he didn't like this, what they were doing now at all…

"That's _exactly_ what I mean!" Ryou cried triumphantly. "You finally said it, didn't you? You felt uncomfortable touching me because I gave you that kiss! I fucking told you that touch meant _nothing _to me—"

"How many times are you going to say it?" Bakura shrieked. "Stop saying it!" He stamped his foot childishly, feeling the pain of the hard ground underneath him surging up his heel. "Stop saying it!" he repeated. "I _never_ felt uncomfortable about you kissing me! You're wrong!"

"Don't you deny it!" Ryou continued. "You even shrank away when you came to return my phone—!"

That made Bakura even more livid. "Your fucking phone! What the fuck was that all about, leaving it over and never once telling me that you left it for two fucking weeks!" Bakura drew his fingers up to his mouth and bit down _hard_, trying very, very hard not to let the warm moistness accumulating in his eyes to form anything.

"Of course I realized that I had forgotten it that same morning when I went home!" Ryou snapped. "But I didn't want to bother you—I wanted you to calm down—so I planned on asking for it that night instead—But you said you didn't want to come over!" he said accusingly.

"So what?" Bakura shouted. "You could have asked any other time—"

"I wanted you to find it and bring it back to me!" Ryou yelled back. "Don't you understand?"

"No, I _don't_ understand! That's fucking stupid! Why the hell would you _wait_ for me to find it when you knew that it was missing?"

"Because you never noticed it was gone!" Ryou finally exploded. The man seemed to shrink a bit as he sagged his shoulders. "You never once noticed. You were like on a different planet the last two weeks. At least the phone would have proved that you were paying attention to me." Ryou sounded very distressed. "But you never noticed."

Bakura tasted blood, and he slowly withdrew his now bleeding fingers. Ryou stared at them with a sadness that Bakura had never seen before either. He watched numbly as Ryou reached out to take his injured fingers before thinking better of it and retracting his own outstretched gloved hand.

"You've always been my closest friend," Ryou continued in a whisper, all lashes of anger now gone. Bakura likewise felt all the energy draining from himself as he slid down onto the dirty ground, where a few weeds were growing in tufts at the foot of the pillar.

Ryou took a few steps forwards and knelt in front of him before continuing. He didn't seem to mind the dingy flooring at all. "It even came to the point when you were absurdly jealous of my other acquaintances… At first, I was so frustrated that you could be so rude to people that have never done anything spiteful to you. I noticed how odd you'd act when my coworkers came around, how you'd be so anxious and testy… You always stayed close by even when I couldn't pay attention to you. It was only recently that I realized that how pleased you always being there made me…

"I'm so sorry that I was never a good companion in return, Bakura." Ryou's voice seemed to be saturated in guilt. "The best thing I could think of doing for you was staying in Ginamaru Apartments to keep you company sometimes. I could have moved out with Kyouko-chan—since I no longer needed to pay for anyone's hospital bills—but the only thing that I could think of doing for you was to stay because you were always there. That was also selfish of me, wasn't it? To continue living there so that you were always close by?"

Bakura stared at him. Ryou had just called him his closest friend. He really believed that they were _friends_. Bile caused by his own guilt threatened to rush up his esophagus.

"But then… I went too far. I kissed you when you obviously didn't ask me to. And then you started avoiding me— you'd still come by, but it wasn't the same anymore. You would avoid touching me. Because I was stupid enough to take advantage of you and scare you away in the first place. That was when I knew that I had always been taking you for granted. It was my fault that I had driven you away and that you were now only going to pretend to be friends with me because I had betrayed your trust in me." Ryou looked as if the weight of the world rested on his shoulders as he continued. "And now I've taken out my frustration on you again even though I know it's completely my fault."

Ryou stopped talking for a long moment, his head bowed. Bakura watched as Ryou's shoulders hitch slightly and his hands went up to cover his face. "I'm so sorry," he whispered in a choke.

Bakura blinked away a few formed tears. Ryou was crying. He had never seen Ryou cry before. "Don't cry," he finally said foolishly. "I'm going to, too." That was an even more silly thing to say, especially out loud, even if it was true. Now that all the fighting spirit had disappeared, Bakura just felt …empty. He blinked again as he slowly began to piece together what Ryou was saying and stared up at the cracked ceiling. There was mold growing up there, he thought randomly.

Ryou thought that he was his real friend. And he was crying because he thought that he had ruined their friendship. Bakura felt another immense wave of guilt hit him. Ryou had no reason to feel this way… It was Bakura's own fault, after all. Now that he was sitting here among the weeds and who-knows-what-else in a parking lot, Bakura was surprised at how fast his thoughts were clicking together.

"Anxiety disorder," Bakura said to the moldy ceiling. Then he dropped his head so that he was looking in Ryou's direction again. "You had your haphephobia. I had my anxiety disorder."

Ryou rubbed at the corners of his eyes with a sleeve corner. " 'Anxiety disorder?'" he repeated in slight confusion. "I never—realized—!" He sounded horrified at himself for not knowing.

"…It's not your fault," Bakura said mildly. "I never told you about it, so how would you know? I had problems like that since I was a kid. Lots of pressure, stuff like that. Got really embarrassing a few times. That's why I started smoking, you know. Calmed the nerves for me."

"…Smoking? But—"

"You made me quit, yeah. So it was pretty bad those first few days. But then…" Bakura's voice diminished into silence. If he told Ryou about this, then there was no going back. Yet he told himself that Ryou had a right to know. He decided to let it all out. The time for denial had long passed. "I started to actually come in contact with you. And that distracted me enough. And then… you let me touch you and the symptoms disappeared altogether." Bakura felt his throat clench up. "Two weeks ago, a doctor told me that instead of smoking now, I fixated myself on you to quit my symptoms. That the only reason why I acted normal was because of me touching you…and the other way around. That our relationship isn't actually…real. That it was all in my head and that I just pulled you in along for the ride."

"That's not true," Ryou said sharply. "You _are _my friend. I- I can tell."

Even Bakura thought that the man was sounding desperate. How could Ryou tell with no other close friends to compare with? "I wanted to believe that. So the last two weeks, I tried not to touch you. It wasn't about the kiss or anything. I just…had to know."

Ryou was very silent for a moment. "And what did you conclude?"

Bakura closed his eyes. "That nothing's changed at all. That I still want to touch you and that I still want you to touch me."

"…Are you saying that trying to sate your anxiety disorder was the only reason why you put up with me for so long? That you actually had an ulterior motive…?" Ryou was quiet. So quiet.

"I didn't know that what I was doing was wrong! At first— okay, at first I wanted to get near you because I thought it was funny to see you hurt, but then I found out that your problem wasn't funny at all and that you and your kid's relationship was suffering because of it so I wanted to help! But I didn't know that I was actually helping myself by helping you," Bakura said in a rush, feeling the dire need to defend himself. "I just don't know anymore!" he said exasperatedly, weakly throwing his hands up into the air. "I thought it was real—but now I don't know." He looked at Ryou's expressionless face, void of anger or sadness now. "I want to treat it as if we… as if we were real, that's why I want to tell you this. But when you kept touching my thigh at the restaurant— and then when we kissed, I—" Bakura quickly stopped talking. There was no need for Ryou to hear that level of detail.

Ryou finally spoke. "Then that's good enough for me. Your effort." His tone was crisp, as if he wanted no arguements.

Bakura covered his face with his hands. "You don't know what you're saying, Ryou—"

"Is it so wrong? To be addicted to touch?" Ryou interrupted him quietly. "As long as it's not painful—and again, I'm sorry for pushing you— but as long as it's not painful, why should you shy away from touch? You already said that you didn't mean to do it on purpose." Ryou's voice dropped so that it resembled a whisper. "You taught me that touch is nothing to be afraid of. Why are you avoiding it now? That hardly seems to be a reason to ruin our relationship—"

"There never was a relationship! Not friendship, nothing!" Bakura cried. "Don't you get it? What we have centers around just _touching—_!"

"Humans are creatures of communication. Touching is one way of that. Given our past, I'm not so surprised that it's such an important part and that it's one of our main ways of communicating…"

Bakura no longer knew what to think. He couldn't understand why Ryou seemed so determined to make this work when all Bakura could see were shambles. He simply sat there against the pillar as Ryou edged closer to him.

"Touch isn't something to be afraid of," Ryou said again steadily. "You're the one who taught me that, Youtai Bakura." Suddenly, Ryou was much too close.

And then, Ryou closed the distance between them with a kiss. His touch was much more gentler this time, and he didn't reek of alcohol. His mouth was open, and it was very moist. Ryou's face felt warm, probably because he had just been crying—

But forget all of that.

Bakura's mind was blank again. Gone was everything that didn't have to do with here and now. All gone. Bakura felt buoyant as he felt stress leaving him once more—

Bakura responded like how he did last time—first with shock, and then with a fevered kiss back. He forgot how badly the last time ended, because all that mattered was Ryou's mouth here against his right now. When he parted his lips and tried to shove his tongue in Ryou's mouth, Ryou didn't pull away and look at him with shock as he did their first time. He allowed it for perhaps two seconds or so, and then roughly returned the favor.

Bakura made an odd sound in his throat at that, but paid no mind otherwise and leaned in closer. He could feel his own face heat up at the contact. His hands scrabbled at Ryou's sleeves and sides as he tried to desperately and subconsciously pull Ryou closer.

To be frank, Bakura wasn't renowned for being the best kisser around, or even a really satisfactory one. His lack of passion with past girlfriends before usually disguised this fact, and it wasn't like he had tons of experience in the first place anyway. He had plenty of passion now, however, and Ryou was getting the full version of it. However, this enabled the man to see exactly how bad Bakura was.

Well, Bakura didn't care. He might have been forced to stop last time, but today was a new day.

His mouth moved sloppily over Ryou's. And he kept biting Ryou in places that might have hurt, but he didn't want to break away and ask. And he wasn't really sure what to do with his tongue, now that it had pushed past Ryou's lips. And—

And Ryou was carefully tugging on his lower lip with his own mouth, enveloping it with heat and giving it soft kisses and— _damn_, that felt good. Bakura gasped for breath and went limp. Ryou could take control of this if he wanted to. Bakura would happily comply with sitting here and letting Ryou do all he wanted— Ryou moved on to do the same to his upper lip, and his fingers were slowly rubbing across Bakura's cheeks and Bakura could hear the little sounds the faintly wet flesh made as they made contact with his—

And then Ryou leaned back, darkened eyes seeming able to look straight past Bakura's dazed and now slightly petulant expression. "You enjoyed that very much, it seems." His voice was like stone, and other than his own reddened and swollen lips and flushed expression, Ryou looked utterly calm.

"Well, yeah—!" Bakura garbled out throatily. Then he stilled. "Shit, Ryou! What the hell did you do that for? You shouldn't have done that just because—just because I wanted you to!" Bakura angrily scrambled to right his slumping posture.

"…But you enjoyed it."

"It—it doesn't matter! You shouldn't force yourself just because you want to be friends with me—It doesn't work that way!" Wouldn't it have been nice if it did? But Bakura had a new found sense of conscience now, and it looked like it was here to stay. He let out a pained sound and covered his face in shame. "You didn't mean to kiss me this time either and… Oh, fuck, this is all _wrong_…" he moaned.

He felt a firm tugging on his wrist and realized that Ryou was trying to pull his arm away. "Do you really think…" Ryou paused, then made an impatient sound as Bakura made no move to move his hands. Bakura suddenly started as he felt Ryou grasp his chin with a cupped palm, yanking it up so that Bakura had to look at him.

"Shut up and listen to me speak. Do you really think that I'm that selfless, Bakura?" Ryou asked slowly. "You think awfully highly of me. It's very flattering but…" Ryou trailed off but managed a thin smile. "If I didn't find you at least somewhat attractive, I never would have kissed you once, and certainly never twice. I told you that I didn't mean the first kiss. That was true. But I didn't kiss you this time just to make you feel better… unfortunately."

Ryou didn't let go of his chin as he continued talking: "I'm like you in the way that I do things to benefit myself as well as others. I'm unlike you in the way that I am completely aware of what I'm doing. Why don't you consider that I might have ulterior motives every once in a while?"

"…Uh?" Bakura uttered softly. He didn't quite understand. This was much more complicated than he had originally anticipated. And he thought that _that_ had been complicated enough.

"I want us to stay together, and I'm willing to do whatever I need to do to make you stay," Ryou said softly. He absentmindedly brushed a thumb across Bakura's cheek and watched as Bakura relax in his grip. "Are you this way because of what I'm saying or because of this?" He repeated the soft brush across his cheek.

Bakura blinked, trying hard to remember to breathe. "…Both," he said finally.

"And… do you want to stay with me?"

"Yes," Bakura answered truthfully.

Ryou smiled thinly again as he began to stroke Bakura's hair with his other hand, carefully watching his expression. "Bakura…" he began softly. Bakura shuddered oddly at the sound of his given name being uttered so. Ryou's smile widened slightly as he continued. "Have you ever considered that It was just me that made your disorder better? That…this," he said as he gently stroked his cheekbone, "was something else entirely?" His voice lowered. "Sometimes, I think that that was what happened with me. That it was just you being there that made it go away, and not your touch…" he laughed. "Because truthfully, I could tell that you were awful at whatever you were doing. Except your massaging… That was quite competent."

"I don't get it," Bakura said, attempting to pay attention to Ryou's words as his mind threatened to be distracted by his touch…his careful, soft touch that was now making Bakura think odd things.

"Yes, you've always been so slow on the uptake, haven't you?" Ryou said, not impatiently. "That's alright…Perhaps it's just my theory."

"…Theory that what?"

"You say that you cannot help but want to…exchange touches. That it makes you calm. Yet that is a part of everyday life, a brush of arms and such. I have never seen you react too extremely to things like that…" Ryou murmured. "It's when I do things like kissing you… or what you said before, about me touching your leg at the restaurant to soothe you… that you get so…excited."

Bakura turned beet red. He wished that Ryou wouldn't use a term like 'excited.' But he could wallow in that pit of embarrassment later. He understood what Ryou was suggesting. He was saying that—

"Maybe the attraction's mutual," Ryou whispered. He suddenly faltered. "Just my theory, of course—"

It was possible. The idea was staring at Bakura so blatantly in the face, he wouldn't have noticed if Yuugi suddenly came streaking across the parking lot dressed only in that awful monster of Frankenstein's shirt of his. Bakura began to think about it, his heart quickly beginning to make up for the slack from the last several minutes.

Was he attracted to Ryou? What made anyone attractive to Bakura in the first place? Well, Ryou was— handsome. Had a nice—voice. Cared for his daughter. Made him all hot and bothered when Ryou kissed him—

'Ryou's a man. Am I attracted to _men_?' Somehow, the idea, although surprising, didn't disgust him. '…Is that why I never had a lasting girlfriend? Then how come I never looked at a man before and thought he was attractive?' Bakura's mind ran through countless questions.

Bakura had been confessed to before. Back in boarding school by a girl or two in the sister school nearby, back in college by another. None ended well because he hadn't been interested. And then he started living as a full fledged adult and realized that he needed some sort of sexual gratification and so he went out sporadically with random girlfriends.

But this was different. Ryou just said that he found him _attractive—_ well, actually, he said that a while ago, but Bakura had just been too stupid to figure it out. For some reason, Bakura was turning red again, looking and feeling a lot like an abashed teenage girl.

"I don't know," he finally said when it came to his notice that Ryou was nervously waiting for an answer. "Maybe. I-I don't know. I need to figure that out. You'll let me figure it out, won't you?" He hated how he sounded so desperate. But he needed time, the one thing that Ryou had never seemed to be able to give him recently.

"You've already done so much for me." Ryou said with a smile, looking soothed. He gave Bakura another stroke through the man's tangled and messy white locks. "The least I can do is help you when you need it, something that I should've realized a long time ago; I'll be here to help you decide."

"You'll really help?"

"Of course."

Bakura had to make sure. He had to make sure there were no loopholes this time, something that always seemed to get the best of him any other time he tried to make plans. "Your help just can't be about touching. I…I won't be another one of your ways to get…" Bakura couldn't finish the sentence; he was far too embarrassed talking about this for a man in his young twenties. He was aware, now more than ever, that he was behaving like an infatuated teenager.

Ryou was silent. "You believe in feelings, not just physical gratification," Ryou said slowly. "You believe in love." The way that he said that last word made Bakura feel more abashed than ever.

"Maybe! I don't know!" he sputtered. Then he began to get worried. "…Don't you?" he asked softly.

"I've never believed in the kind you're speaking of. That's the absolute truth. I have only ever loved Kyouko. What _we_ have for each other right now…is not love. But perhaps, someday, you can teach me to believe in that as well."

"You're not sure it's going to work out." Bakura tried to keep the disappointment out of his voice.

"We're never sure if anything's ever going to work out," Ryou corrected quietly. "But I've told you before that you're a different kind of person, Youtai Bakura. To your credit, I have a lot of faith in your abilities."

Bakura took in another breath. How did all of this happen? When did all of this happen? He needed more time to think this through, more time to think about thinking this through. But something told him to go for it. Actually, it told him to answer 'Say, yes, you bastard!' But it sounded just like himself, and there was no longer any other voices arguing with it to help make a decision. "…Fine. Deal," Bakura finally uttered.

Suddenly, he felt a lot lighter, like the hold his anxiety problems have always had on him had suddenly loosened.

Ryou smiled warmly. "And yet another deal is made between us. I hope that this one ends up better than the last one." Bakura cracked a weak grin at the inside joke, still not quite believing what had just transpired. His heart beat quickly, and he was breathing entirely too hard, but it felt… normal, now that he knew that things between Ryou and himself had a right to be unknown.

He watched as Ryou picked up his hands and gave a brief kiss to his knuckles. Bakura was so shocked by the contact that he didn't notice that the blood on his fingertips had long since clotted and dried. Bakura continued to stare in fascination as Ryou dropped his hands and pulled off his own gloves. "You have so many wounds on your hands, just as I do," he heard Ryou murmur.

Newly healed red and raw finger tips were compared to the old, circular burns that dotted the back of the hands. Bakura suppressed a shiver as Ryou lifted his fingers again with his own bare warm hands, examining them.

Ryou looked up with an amused expression. "I take it that you're enjoying this," he said as he lifted his bare hand up to stroke a few fingers over Bakura's temple and down the side of his face. Bakura made a huff that was meant to be indignant but sounded like a squeak instead. Ryou frowned and stopped moving. "I thought that you would get calmer."

"No! Don't —er, stop." It sounded pitiful, even to Bakura's pounding ears. To prove his point, he grabbed Ryou's hand and pressed it back to his cheek. Wow, that was an embarrassing thing to do. Just as he thought that, however, something else distracted him. He could feel Ryou's scars because he was pressing his own fingers over them, but Ryou was making no move to retract his hands.

Slowly moving Ryou's hand to the front of his vision, Bakura felt his heart speed up a little faster than was quite necessary, thank you very much. Ryou let him hold his hand there, never once making a single protest as Bakura rubbed his fingers over the marks. Ryou did inhale sharply when Bakura decided not to think too deeply again and kissed the back of his hands in a similar fashion Ryou had done, though, so that was something.

And then Bakura let go of his hands, his red shade turning into that violent shade of puce. He heard Ryou laugh quietly and lean in again. Bakura let out another not-squeak as Ryou gently touched his neck with his fingertips.

"Such an interesting reaction. I wonder…" Ryou muttered, the ghost of a smile still on his lips.

"Wonder what?" Bakura asked faintly.

"Wonder what it takes for you to go over the edge," Ryou replied nonchalantly.

"…Uh?" Bakura was faintly reminded of a time when he had thought that something along those lines, a time in which he got up everyday to go to work and torment Ryou. Yet Ryou's tone belied the odd, darkened look in his eyes.

Bakura swore mentally as he took a sharp inhale. Ryou was talking about—

"We must go find Bakura-sensei!"

"Don't you dare stop us, Kuroda!"

"Yeah! And Tanaka, you can go to hell! We have to make _sure_!"

A hysterical myriad of voices had suddenly burst into the silence of the parking lot.

"Of course I have to stop you!" the voice that must have belonged to Kuroda bellowed not too far away from where the female voices were coming from. "These are working hours! We can't all just go MIA like Bakura did— Sawara! Yamashita! Mori! Hiyashi! Ito! Hanawa! God damn it, you girls get your asses back up to the third floor!"

"That's right! What's the point of coming down here? If he went to get his car, he would have gone somewhere, not stay here!"

"Be quiet, Tanaka! I don't care! If you want to moan and groan so much, you and Kuroda go back up! And take Kobayashi with you, will you?"

"Hey!" said a hurt voice that could only belong to Kobayashi.

"That's right! Don't be jealous because we all like Bakura-sensei more than you!"

"Oi! I already told you that that is _not_ true!" Kuroda sounded mad.

"Ha! As if!"

"Right?"

"Besides, they looked like they were fighting! If they break up, then maybe I'll finally have a shot—"

"Hey! Bakura-sensei is mine!"

"Is not!"

"Is, too!"

"Damn! Where'd I keep my car keys? Do you think that Bakura-sensei went home?"

Bakura stared at Ryou as the pair listened to the conversation. What foolishness were they all spouting? What kind of absurd conclusions have they made about his relationship to Ryou? They were safe against the pillar; it blocked the sight of them from the direction the voices were coming from. "… I think they're looking for you."

"Not jealous anymore, are you?"

Bakura shrugged. "They've got nothing on me."

Ryou let out another laugh. Grinning as he slipped his gloves back on, he stood up and held out a hand for Bakura to take. After heaving himself up, Bakura watched with mild interest as Ryou walked around to the side of the pillar and stepped out into the clearing. Bakura followed cautiously.

"We're over here," Ryou called out, waving a hand above his hand to direct their attention.

"Look! There he is—I mean, there they are!" One of the women sounded disappointed that Bakura was there standing next to Ryou.

"Bakura-sensei!" came the chorus of wails as a mob of no less than six women stampeded toward them. Three men came hobbling not far behind them. There was a sudden burst of loud and frantic questioning, which Ryou answered with ease.

"We noticed that you haven't been yourself for the past couple of weeks, Bakura-sensei—"

"Yes. I was feeling unwell— But I'm completely better now," he amended hastily when another cry of outrage answered him.

"We saw you leaving so suddenly with Youtai-san—(there was a brief uneasy look in Bakura's direction here) and we were so worried—"

"I had urgent matters with Bakura that I had to discuss…and… do…"

"Sorry about this, Bakura. Couldn't keep them in. I sure hope management doesn't decide to suddenly check the third floor—"

"No, it's my fault really for causing all of this."

"No more beating around the bush! Is Bakura-sensei and Youtai-san really together?" one woman finally asked.

There was a brief silence. But before Ryou could diplomatically answer that one, Bakura beat him to the punch. Who cares how these women somehow came to their newfound relationship faster than the people of the relationship in question did? He was going to stop the rumor mill once and for all.

He grabbed Ryou's arm, turned him so that they faced each other, and rammed their mouths together.

There was an even longer silence as Ryou let out a surprised but pleased sound and began to languidly kiss him back.

And then—everyone took a step back in utter shock. There was some squealing and some garbled sounds.

"Kuroda was right!"

"He was right!"

"I was right!" Kuroda sounded far too shocked that he was right.

"Oh my god! I can't believe this!"

"Wow, that's pretty hot—"

"Damn it! I can't find my phone now either! I need to take a picture of this—"

"Yeah, I'm in the lot now with Mokuba. Really, I don't know why you love calling me so much. It's sweet, but really! We're only like a level away! I was the one who kept your ass safe all of last year— Unless you're actually feeling lonely and scared? Is that it? Hahaha—Ouch!"

That last voice had belonged to a man— Bakura's and Ryou's neighbor, Jounouchi, who was walking down the lot with a young boy about ten years old. The kid had a shock of long scraggly black hair, but as Bakura got over the odd coincidence of seeing Jounouchi here, he had to wonder why the boy's features looked somewhat familiar.

Jounouchi was now rubbing his foot gingerly hopping on one foot— the other one had apparently been stepped on by a backpedaling high heel who had backpedaled a little too far.

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" squeaked the owner of the high heel, flushing furiously. It was Hanawa. Why was it always Hanawa?

"It's okay— Just, uh, be careful when you go out with your stilettos, will you?" Jounouchi asked. He turned back to his phone. "Huh? Oh, nothing— Er, just a mob— Let me finish! It's mostly just a bunch of young women— Seriously— Will you listen to yourself? You're so paranoid— What? You're taking the car over?"

Suddenly, a long and sleek black car pulled up in front of everyone. Bakura could hear a car door swing open, but he couldn't see who came out; the mob blocked him from seeing. Then a new voice began to speak sharply and loudly.

"Get away from Katsuya and out of my sight right now. Hell knows I work on projects a hundred and fifty times more dangerous than videogames when I'm at home."

The crowd, men and women alike, quickly dispersed and fled back to the exit on the far side of the lot. When the cloud settled, there stood… Kaiba Seto.

It seemed like a continuation of an odd coincidence, especially when Bakura's boss gave him a suspicious look and said, "Didn't Mutou Yuugi say that you were taking a day off to rest at home today?"

"Er… Thought I'd take a walk," Bakura said, not completely untruthfully. There was something not quite normal here. Kaiba had warned Ryou's coworkers to leave… someone named Katsuya alone. Was it the name of the kid? No, Bakura realized that Jounouchi had called him Mokuba. And wait, wasn't Jounouchi's given name Katsuya?

"Hey, big brother!" the kid said to Kaiba with a wide smile.

Bakura blanched. 'Big brother'?

"Seto," Jounouchi greeted warningly. Bakura furrowed his eyebrows. Kaiba knew Jounouchi? And well enough to call him Katsuya? And Jounouchi knew Kaiba well enough to call him _Seto_?

…What?

"Don't look at me like that. You don't know if he still has some assistants on the run," Kaiba said in a very uncharacteristic half-whine. "You're the one who always said to be careful!"

Jounouchi looked indignant. "I said for _you_ to be careful! I can take care of myself!"

Bakura couldn't understand the conversation at all. He only managed to say one thing. "You two…know each other?" He pointed at Kaiba, and then at Jounouchi, and then back at Kaiba, and then back again.

Jounouchi turned to face him. "Er…yeah. We've been dating for a year or so, actually," he said, rubbing the back of his neck slowly.

Bakura inhaled sharply. "…Dating? Y—you lived a door down!" he said accusingly to Jounouchi. "You've been…out with my boss? How come I've never heard about this?"

Kaiba gave him a disgruntled look. "I like to live a _private_ life," he snapped, as if this was none of Bakura's business. Well, it really wasn't. But _seriously_?

Jounouchi shrugged. "Well, it's not like it's a secret. It's just that no one ever bothered to ask. Especially you. You always seemed to be in a bad mood." His eyes lit up in sudden thought. "Though I think that I did give you a hint once. I gave your contact information to Bakura here, remember, Youtai?" He gestured over to Ryou, who was calmly watching this whole exchange of information. "Obviously, you never gave it to me, so didn't you ever wonder where I got it? I called Seto and got him to pull up your file from Kaiba Corp."

Bakura blanched further. His old suspicion that Kaiba did in fact keep everyone's whereabouts on a gigantic system somewhere was true.

"Oh, but a tabloid did once write something, didn't it, Seto?" He elbowed Kaiba familiarly in the stomach. "You were taken off the most eligible bachelor list and everything!" He gave him a wry grin. "Even got my picture from the time we went to Bermuda. Too blurry, though."

Bakura inhaled sharply again. Jounouchi had told him that he was going to Bermuda with someone who he wished would get off his laptop. And that magazine. Yuugi had given him a copy. It was in his bag at home—

"Humph. How the hell did they manage to take pictures is something I'd like to know," Kaiba muttered irritably, crossing his arms in discontentment.

"With a camera, stupid," Jounouchi said with a leer, gutting Kaiba in the abdomen once more.

Bakura watched this strange display of affection. He had never heard of anyone ever insulting Kaiba and getting away with it. And shit, was his boss _smiling_? At that ridiculous joke that Jounouchi had been able to make because of Kaiba's own bad choice of words?

He had to let out a smirk. He couldn't help it.

Kaiba immediately turned back into his usual sour self when he saw Bakura's expression. "Wipe that grin off of your face before I smack it off for you." He narrowed his eyes. "Or in your case, _fire_. And don't think that I won't."

Bakura wiped it off.

"Let's go," Kaiba said briskly, now satisfied that there was no other business left to do here. "Mokuba has to get home and finish his homework."

"Alright." Jounouchi turned to Bakura again and shrugged good-naturedly. "Sorry about never having told you, man." Bakura nodded weakly. "See you two around!" Jounouchi said finally to Ryou and the stricken Bakura before giving them a jaunty wave and following Mokuba into the car.

Kaiba gave Bakura once last look. "All of these sick days are coming out of your paycheck, Youtai. I'll be seeing _you_ at work tomorrow." He gave Ryou a curt nod, and with a swish of his billowing coat, he entered the car as well.

As the vehicle sped away, Bakura turned to Ryou. "I'd feel worse if I was the only one here that didn't know Jounouchi was together with my boss," he said brightly. "But at least I have company."

Ryou surprisingly shook his head. "Jounouchi-san always comes to pick up Kaiba Mokuba after his lessons. He takes violin class on our floor every week. I've known that he and Mokuba-san's brother have been in a relationship for several months now." Ryou's lips twitched into a smile. "Sorry," he said, not sounding very sorry at all.

Bakura's grin disappeared a second time.

And then his explosion could be heard throughout all four corners of the parking lot. "Shit! Am I the only one who didn't know? What the fuck!"

* * *

**Author's Note: **Ahh! Jounouchi's and Kaiba's relationship is finally revealed! Their back story is actual a basis for another story, one that I plan to write someday that concentrates just on them: Jounouchi, ex-cop turned private bodyguard takes on Kaiba Seto as a client after the videogame enterprise CEO starts receiving death threats… And so on. But that will be written very, very far off from now.

So many references! "Damn your poisoned lips" is a line from a 90's Hong Kong horror comedy movie called Out of the Dark. Funny, silly, and somewhat sad movie. The cartoon hit 'Zorc and Pals' as well as that whole little conversation between Bakura and Marik in Bakura's dream are from YGOTAS. The Change of Heart card part was strongly inspired by the canon Yugioh! universe.

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	17. Muse

If someone had insisted to Youtai Bakura way back in late February (or even up to late March) that the slightly crazed smoker was going to become tolerant of the pale, thin, pinched-looking man named Bakura Ryou standing over there by the mailboxes, Bakura would never have believed it.

…In fact, Bakura would have laughed obnoxiously as he escorted this gibberish-spouting person all the way to Domino Hospital's psychiatric ward. (Then he would have gone back home to Ginmaru Apartments to creepily spy on and plot against Ryou.)

And even if Youtai Bakura actually _did_ entertain the idea that he would one day come to a mutual understanding with one Bakura Ryou at that time, he certainly would never have thought about having amiable feelings for the man. (That was because he would have had a hell of a time trying to understand the whole I-will-not-strangle-the-highfalutin-bastard-in-his-sleep thing, let alone something like companionship.)

And _even if he did _have to admit to the idea that both aforementioned events (the idea that he and Ryou would someday be able to sit in the same vicinity without clawing each other up and the idea that they could be buddies) happened, Bakura would have thought that hell would have to freeze over before believing that upon surpassing those hundred meter high hurdles, that he could accept the notion that the socially awkward Ryou kissing and touching him were welcome advances as well.

All in all, that crap-load of occurrences would have been just ridiculous; in fact, it would have almost been as ridiculous as being told that Kaiba Seto had some kind of romantic relationship with Bakura's blond, scruffy, and apparently ex-bodyguard-of-some-sort neighbor one door down.

…Hmm.

September 16th of the very same year, Bakura witnessed Jounouchi Katsuya confessing that the latter has in fact been dating Kaiba for about a year, and then watched as the blond rode off with Kaiba and Kaiba's little brother in the most expensive car the white-haired man had ever seen.

Youtai Bakura was now waiting for King Enma to start passing out little ice lollies.

* * *

Bakura took a moment to go back to the whole 'accepting-the-notion-that-the-socially-awkward- Ryou-kissing-and-touching-him-were-welcome-advances' scenario.

In fact, he let it _all_ sink in as he somehow found himself sitting in the front passenger seat in Ryou's car, whizzing along the highway towards the other side of Domino City on their way to Sunshine Nursery School to pick Kyouko up. Everything was sinking in pretty slowly, which was very good for the anxiety-prone game designer.

Bakura sneaked a glance over to the man in the driver's seat named Bakura Ryou. Bakura Ryou, who wore a pair of rectangular silver frames perched over his nose as he drove, whose polite speech belied an unbelievably high level of snark underneath, who wore a pair of gloves for a reason unknown to most people.

…Who had the ability to make Bakura act very odd with a simple touch.

Of course, Ryou wasn't touching him now; that was probably the reason Bakura could think relatively coherently at the moment. It was very strange how Ryou had the ability to both scramble his mind and clear it as well…

The man in question was currently peering over his glasses as he scanned the road silently, both gloved hands firmly at the wheel. Yet, perhaps Ryou's presence itself was getting contagious; Bakura was finding it difficult to think in general with him around, especially when the topic had to do with the two of them. For example, there was the nature of his relationship with Ryou. Then there was the strangely not unpleasant mix of nervousness and slightly excited stir that he felt when he thought about the nature of his relationship with Ryou. And of course, there was the nature of his relationship with Kyouko _because_ of his relationship with Ryou.

Bakura briefly felt his eyes roll up towards the roof of the car and towards to the back of his head. They were going to have to figure out how to explain to Kyouko that he now had with Ryou, which was… complicated, to say the least, and something that he could barely explain to himself, let alone a five year old kid.

Luckily, Kyouko didn't have her father's awful temper.

Bakura let out a weak chuckle under his breath and blanched. The time will come when it comes, and not a moment sooner.

"Kyouko's school is about a fifteen minute drive from here, Bakura."

Bakura turned his head to face the man in the driver's seat again and watched blankly as Ryou shifted the bridge of his glasses higher with a finger; the latter then returned the gloved hand to the wheel as he turned the wheel slightly to slowly exit the highway.

"Alright," Bakura said faintly.

No, Bakura did not regret anything. In fact, he honestly could not remember the last time he had been so happy (rather, happy at all) about being in a relationship: Ryou had actually told him that he, well, that he liked Bakura. To someone who found it a pain in the ass to be in relationships and disliked people— namely young, short men with pointy, ridiculously colored hair named Mutou Yuugi— constantly wheedling at him about the former's lack of steady relationships, Ryou's confession was definitely special to him.

It made Bakura kind of self-conscious, actually. This was the first time he had some degree of feelings for a person who has expressed interest in him in return. He didn't know whether his own feelings were of attraction or something else, let alone how to reciprocate if it was in fact attraction.

Yet Bakura finally had the chance to figure it out. Ryou understood that. And that calmed him immensely.

He let himself look at Ryou again and saw a tuft of long white hair tucked behind Ryou's ear to allow clearer access to the road in front of them.

'Damn him and his neat hair,' Bakura thought good-naturedly to himself. 'Shit, I want to mess it up with my hands so bad—just to see what it's like.' He wondered briefly about the sensation and then snorted silently. Ryou would definitely not let something like that slide easily; they'd probably get into a good grapple—and they'd probably both end up off their feet— before Ryou would even look slightly mussed. A mental image of a scowling Ryou staring up at him with Bakura's fingers tangled tightly in the former's hair came into mind.

They would be breathing rapidly after a scuffle like that, Bakura thought to himself. Ryou would undeniably not be pleased, and would probably have that steely expression in his eyes and flip them over so that he could take a good retaliation attack on Bakura while on top of him— How would Ryou get revenge in a case like that? Bakura didn't think that Ryou would start to senselessly throttle his neck; that wasn't the man's style. No, Ryou would make sure that he had the upper hand before meticulously starting to counterattack…

The man quickly felt the feeling of amusement from that little fantasy morph into something distinctly less innocent. He flushed beet red again, and began to choke up a bit of expired air that he had kept in his windpipes for a bit too long.

"Is something the matter?"

"Huh?"

Ryou had looked away from the road and was now staring at him with concern, his glasses still perched a little low.

"…Uh, no. N-nothing," Bakura blathered hastily. "Nothing's the matter."

A smile stayed on Ryou's lips even after he turned back to face the front again. "You're cute when you do that."

Bakura was taken back, and the red shade of his cheeks flamed to a puce. "What?"

"You're cute when you blush," Ryou said again nonchalantly, easily turning the wheel to ease the car around a block.

"I am _not_!"

"I think that should be left for me to decide. What were you thinking about?"

"Nothing inappropriate!" Bakura immediately snapped back, suddenly finding the passing buildings on his window side very eye-catching.

"I never suggested that you were," Ryou said in a distinctly amused tone. "Should I be?"

"Shut up, Ryou!"

"Only because we've arrived." Ryou deftly undid his seatbelt and slipped off his glasses. "This might take a while. I'll return with Kyouko in twenty minutes or so." Bakura nodded numbly as Ryou briskly stepped out of the car and closed the door behind him.

With Ryou gone, and with no one else to bother him, Bakura finally had a few moments to himself to simply…exist.

There was so much unknown. So much— _too_ much, that could go wrong.

Yet for once in a very, very long time, Bakura felt utterly unconcerned about it. Just as he drowsily thought that he owed Marik and Yuugi apologies at the very least, Bakura fell into a deep sleep, completely calmly for the first time in weeks.

* * *

_It was foggy. Bakura wasn't exactly sure what the dimensions of the area he was in were; anytime he took a step forward, the dense, purplish fog seemed to move with him._

_There was something heavy around his neck, he realized. He looked down. There was a very thin rope around his neck, and attached to the rope, held up by his hands, was a rather familiar heavy, circular golden disc. Attached to the inner diameter of the circle by its three angles was a triangle, and at its center was an eye. Yet the most interesting part were the five points on the outer diameter, all of which were pointing straight down._

"'_The hell?" Bakura frowned. For the life of him, he could not understand why something he's only drawn on a computer program would be physically hanging around his neck. However, he did somehow understand that the points were supposed to lead him somewhere. What the hell did 'straight down' mean?_

_He looked at the ground. There was just more of that thick purple smoke swirling around. He shook it a bit. The points stubbornly stayed pointing at the phantasmagoric plane below him. _

"_Youtai Bakura." A deep, masculine voice cut into the fog. Bakura immediately turned his head about to find where the voice was coming from._

_Slowly, the figure of a rather short man dressed in the garb of an ancient Egyptian and with a pendant of an inverted pyramid around his neck appeared. Bakura squinted. There was something familiar about that pointy, multi-colored hairstyle…_

"_What? Mutou?" Only it didn't quite look like Yuugi. This guy was definitely taller. And now that Bakura looked a bit more closely, there was something different about this man's eyes and the yellow jagged bangs that his effervescent coworker was so fond of._

"_Shit. You're not real. You're— Damn it, what was the name again—" This was very obviously a dream. A silly one, at that. Hasn't he had enough of those already? "Oh, god, The voices are back, aren't they? —Only better. You guys are getting bodies now, too."_

"_No. This is the last time that you'll be hearing voices in your mind. You're fine now." Well, this voice certainly did not belong to Yuugi…_

"…_What?"_

_The Yuugi look-a-like ignored Bakura's question. "The Millennium Ring is of no use to you anymore."_

"_What do you mean, it's of no use?"_

"_The Ring cannot help you because what you seek is right in front of you," the man replied. _

"_So exactly what is it that I seek— Shit, I mean, what the hell is it that I'm supposedly looking for?"_

"_Your happiness, of course." And then, Yami Yuugi vanished._

_A little while later, Bakura was aware of himself drifting absentmindedly about. He didn't have a body; rather, it was like he was just a free-floating entity that had no worries in the world._

"_Let him rest. I think he needs it. We'll call him up when it's time," a voice said. This new voice also belonged to a man, although Bakura was certain that he had heard it before._

"_Really?" another just as familiar voice asked dubiously._

'_The lying bastard,' Bakura thought. 'There _are_ still voices in my head.' He paused. Who was he calling a lying bastard again? It was someone familiar, he thought…_

_Either way, there was something different about the voices that were conversing in his mind this time that he couldn't put his finger on. _

"_Yes, of course. We'll be right here when he wakes up."_

_Bakura felt himself drifting away again._

Smack.

"Hmm?"

Smack. Smack.

What the fuck was that sound? And why was Bakura's left cheek hurting?

"Urmph."

Smack. Smack. Smack-smack-smack-smack—

Bakura turned over a bit, but now it was his right cheek that was taking in the hits instead.

"Gahhh…"

Smack. Smack. Smackity-smack. Smackity-smack. Smackity-smack.

Shit! One blow actually hit his nose—

"What the fuck…?" Bakura groaned, trying to get away from the disturbance.

"…We're waiting!"

"Ugh?"

"Ji-chan! Daddy and I are waiting!" the soft voice insisted, drifting in and out of Bakura's consciousness. "Wake up!"

"Huh?" Bakura managed again.

"Wake up, wake up, wake up! Do it now, or I'll smush you!" the voice cried, followed by a snort of disbelief belonging to some other person.

Suddenly, both the right and left sides of his face were being pushed together by a pair of warm and solid, albeit rather weak,five-fingered pudgy presences. Bakura opened his eyes slowly. Kyouko's large, bespectacled eyes stared at him back, and Bakura yelled out.

Kyouko grinned from where she was currently, hunched over in a mid-standing position between the driver's seat and the front passenger seat. "Scared that I'll smush you to death, right, ji-chan?" she asked, puffing out her chest, her two braided pigtails flopping up and down as she nodded fervently.

Bakura snorted. "Yeah, whatever." He rolled back to a comfortable position in his seat, closing his eyes. Perhaps he could recognize the voices if he returned to that odd dream at the end…

"Why are you going back to sleep, ji-chan? We're already home! Get up, get up!"

"Shit, when did we get here? How long was I sleeping?" Sure enough, as Bakura craned his neck and looked out of the windshield, there stood the Ginamaru Apartments building that they lived in.

"I was going to wake you up when Daddy picked me up, but Daddy said to let you sleep. You slept through it all, ji-chan! I bet you could sleep through thunder!" Kyouko looked awed at Bakura's frankly useless ability.

"Er…right."

"Quite surprising, really," Ryou said offhandedly. "I could distinctly remember a time when you woke up because I was playing piano too loudly for your delicate ears."

"Ha ha," Bakura forced out sardonically.

"Come on, come on!" Kyouko began to tug at his sleeve again.

"Alright! Alright! I'm up," Bakura said impatiently, stepping out of the car.

"You're eating dinner with me and Daddy, right?"

"… Yeah, why the hell not?" Bakura finally said. As Kyouko cheered, flailing her arms excitedly, Bakura thought that he saw Ryou smile. Unfortunately, by the time he tried to get a closer look, Ryou had already turned around. Bakura grinned anyway. Letting out a groan as he stretched his sore arms, the man tried to recall the odd slumber he had been in just shortly before. Although he could not remember snippets of his first odd dream at all, he was no longer sure whether the second one was in his head or reality.

Bakura supposed it didn't matter.

* * *

After a warm dinner and Kyouko hurried off to bed, Bakura flopped down on one of Ryou's couches, drained of energy. Yet as he felt himself drifting off, his ears picked up the sound of tinkling china being set down on the table beside him while his nose told him what was in the porcelain cup; Ryou had placed a cup of tea for him there. Then there was a slight _fwump _sound as he heard Ryou sitting down in the sofa chair adjacent to him. Bakura made a grunt and opened his eyes. "Oh, thanks," he said as he righted himself and picked up his tea.

"Not at all," the other said nonchalantly, sipping at his own cup of what Bakura automatically knew was warmed milk. "How are you feeling, Bakura-san?" Ryou asked after a few moments of comfortable silence. "You're being rather quiet."

"Eh?" Bakura blinked. He hadn't realized. "I was?"

"Is something on your mind, perhaps?"

"…Nothing that I know of." The thing was that there was in fact nothing on Bakura's mind. It was just so odd that there was nothing to needlessly worry over, and the result was that the man was just…there.

Ryou's mouth twitched into a thin smile at his words, and Bakura had the faint, good-natured suspicion that Ryou took his words to mean that the man had nothing in his brain at all.

That bastard.

Then, something did come to mind: "Hey, Ryou."

"Hmm?"

"…Are you free this Saturday night?"

Ryou blinked at him. "I suppose, yes, I am." He paused for a moment. "Why do you ask?"

Yes, why did Bakura ask?

The answer to that question would have been as follows: Bakura had gotten a new tendency to suddenly act out on things. The days of meticulously plotting and such weren't exactly gone for good. Rather, the man was achieving grounds in previously unmapped territory, and— Never mind. He couldn't explain it. "Err… well, I was thinking that we should go somewhere. Just the two of us." Bakura felt the age-old flush crawling up his neck. Well, damn, this wasn't sounding like his intentions— which were _perfectly pure_, if anyone were to ask.

"…Like a date?" Ryou had no expression on his face as he said this. Just from that, Bakura had a suspicion that the man wasn't intentionally making fun of him. Bakura, himself, had rarely done this before—this asking someone out thing, seeing that he was never incredibly interested in the people he did sporadically invite on his whimsical outings. But Ryou was…different, he knew.

Yet Bakura still wondered again what in the world possessed him to suddenly ask the man out. Because that was what he was doing, he knew. He was asking Bakura Ryou out on a god damn date. If only the Youtai Bakura from February could see him now.

The Youtai Bakura of September felt the flush creep past his neck and onto his face. He didn't have the guts just yet to say that it was, though it was on the tip of his tongue. "…You don't want to?" he uttered instead.

Ryou blinked at him again before holding up his free hand in defense, looking taken back. "Oh, no—It's not that. I apologize…" Ryou shifted in his seat."…Do you have a place in mind, Bakura-san?"

"Err…Yeah, actually. A yakitori restaurant. A new one opened up on the other side of Domino Public Park and I want to see if the food's any good."

"…A yakitori restaurant?" Ryou repeated the words slowly. They sounded very foreign in his mouth. There was a very distinct frown on his face.

"What? What's wrong with that? I just thought that it'll be a nice place to go." Bakura began to build up an instinctual defense.

Ryou blinked at him for a third time, and the frown was hidden away. "No, Bakura-san. You want to go, so we shall go there." Ryou sounded rather soft as he said that.

"Really?" Bakura wondered whether Ryou was being so complacent to make up for their botched plans to celebrate the latter's birthday.

"Yes, really. What time is convenient for you?"

The conversation slowly carried on to other topics after a while. Bakura got over his embarrassment for his fumbled date planning and just became accustomed to sitting on Ryou's sofa, chugging down his tea. It was nice, simply being there next to Ryou— just his sitting there with that cup of milk in hand comforted the man.… Bakura felt utterly sated, even though he was doing absolutely nothing but chatting.

It was an unusual but completely welcome sensation.

And then, before Bakura knew it, it was late, and it was time for him to return to the room just several paces away. After they both stood up, Bakura to leave and Ryou to see him off, Bakura inexplicably touched Ryou's arm. There was no need to; feeling the warmth through the man's sleeve did not make Bakura any calmer.

Rather, it was the slightly quizzical expression on Ryou's face as he did so—the expression that showed slight curiosity but nothing like disgust or pain— that made Bakura content.

* * *

Meanwhile, now back at work lest Kaiba come and hunt his ass down for shirking off again, Bakura returned to Kaiba Corp the next day. Yuugi had tackled him with a hug the moment he had stepped foot off of the elevator, but had surprisingly said little else other than that the design floor was packing up the 'The King of Games' project. It made the white-haired man slightly nostalgic to see themselves both physically and virtually shelving the game away; after all, he had spent a lot of time on the damn thing. Bakura would never admit that out loud, though.

As he cleared the files off of his computer, Bakura gave a cursory glance at the dates and raised his eyebrows. It almost didn't cross his mind; the entirety of The King of Games' design had been conceived and ended between his very first meeting with Bakura Ryou up to their current relationship—whatever the hell that was.

Bakura felt his mouth tilt into a smile.

Friday night came soon enough. After dropping Kyouko off at Jounouchi's—and Ryou telling the chuckling blond man that watching the show 'Zorc and Pals' again was completely out of the question—the two set off on their outing.

The restaurant was quite noisy and messy, but the only reason for that was because it was a very popular place. After being greeted heartily by the chef manning the counter, the two managed to find an empty booth and sat down.

Amidst the colorful papers denoting the specials pinned up against the wall, the working stiffs with their suit jackets off, their ties loosened, and their sleeves rolled up, and the generally loud and bustling atmosphere of the restaurant, Bakura did have to admit that Ryou looked more than a tad out of place. The older man had carefully removed and folded his jacket beside him when they sat down, and was now looking about interestedly.

"Is this your first time in a yakitori restaurant or something?" Bakura asked. "You keep looking around."

Ryou pursed his lips. "I'm still a little unused to sitting so close to so many other people." Ryou's eyes met Bakura's widened ones for a moment. "It's really nothing to worry about," he reassured him. "I'm quite fine."

"Oh, shit… Sorry. It's been so long that— Fuck. I didn't think about that." Bakura felt the tips of his ears glow a guilty red.

"It's fine, really." Ryou held up his mug of hot green tea and took a sip, effectively and gracefully dropping the subject that way.

Well, this wasn't starting out well.

Somehow, a conversation about Bakura's work started, and if had taken a figurative step back, Bakura would have realized that this was very much like the times in which he massaged the man. Ryou listened attentively, and any superficial discomfort that he had initially dissipated into air. It was in fact _better_ than those times; Ryou was not holding secrets from him, and vice versa.

It was invigorating.

And then there was something else that set this apart from those other times. Bakura wasn't exactly sure how it happened, nor could he trace the path that the conversation had taken to get there, but one moment he was reenacting animatedly a scene in which his boss had freaked out over something silly or the other, and the next moment—

Ryou was smiling.

It took a good ten seconds for the shock to set in past Bakura's skull. The man folded his hands together with his chin resting on top, elbows leaning lightly against the table— and smiled.

It was a different kind of smile than Bakura had ever seen on the man. It wasn't a 'I'm-going-to-murder-Youtai-even-if-it's-the-last-thing-I-do' kind of smile (Bakura has had the pleasure of not having to see that expression for quite a while now), nor was it a 'Thanks-for-playing-with-Kyouko' kind of smile (which Bakura still received now and then). It wasn't even the smile that Ryou gave him in the parking lot, the one that show how relieved he was that the two were no longer at odds with each other.

It was a smile that curved both ends of his lips up, exposing a hint of teeth. And it wasn't just the mouth. The smile reached to his eyes, which were oddly warm and at ease.

It made Bakura blush, and when Ryou blinked and asked him what was the matter, the man could do little else except garble something and quickly order for another asparagus stick.

* * *

Bakura stared blankly at his work computer screen the next morning, a bottle of water in one hand and his computer mouse in the other. That smile of Ryou's. It was really nice. Pretty, even (though it was likely Ryou would have his limbs taken off one by one if he said that to his face). The guy should smile more often.

"Huh…" he sighed out loud, very much still in his daze. That is, until Yuugi suddenly appeared and plopped down on his desk. That woke Bakura right up. "'The fuck, Mutou?" he shouted, smacking his rapidly pounding heart repeatedly. "Damn it!"

"New project, Youtai-kun!" the short man sang happily, flapping a pile of papers about in the air. He watched as Bakura continued to take whacks at his chest, posture very much like that of an old man's. Yuugi threw his head back and chortled for a good three seconds. "You're so funny," he said amusedly, as if Bakura had purposely put on a comedic show for him.

"Shit, Mutou! I'm not _trying_ to be funny! That fucking shocked the shit out of me."

"Only 'cause you weren't not paying attention." Yuugi cocked his head to the side, a tiny frown pulling at his mouth. His tone immediately became more serious: "You've really been out of it almost all of September, Youtai-kun…And you just recently came back. Are you okay now?"

"I'm…I'm fine." Hell, for once, he was telling the truth.

Yuugi immediately grinned, the solemn look vanishing in a blink. "Yay! Okay, time to work."

Bakura and Yuugi set themselves into their new project. As usual, Bakura scribbled away as Yuugi read off the initial basic storyline to him. It was very much like the old days, other than one fact…

There was a rather large number of characters this time, and yet Bakura found his strength to be surprisingly steady as he worked through each of the character designs. That wasn't the most surprising event to note; rather, it was that—

"Whoa-hey!" Yuugi cried dramatically as he picked up the drawing on top of the completed pile.

"What is it now, Mutou?"

"No, this has to be a fluke!" Yuugi took the entire pile off of Bakura's desk and examined each of the drawings. He gasped loudly. "I can't believe it!" he said, staring at Bakura with curious eyes.

"What?" Bakura snapped, quickly losing patience.

"All of the characters are _smiling_, Youtai-kun!" Yuugi exclaimed. He said it as if the act was utterly blasphemous.

Bakura snatched the papers back from him and began to sort through them; sure enough, each of the faces were completed with a familiar light curve of the lips.

"What gives? Have you found a muse or something?" Yuugi asked.

"A _what_?"

"You know! A muse! A source of inspiration!"

A muse? Hmm.

"…I guess you can say that," Bakura said after a moment. He thought of Ryou. A Ryou looking at him and giving him that smile. "Huh. He really is getting to my head, isn't he?" he muttered to himself affectionately. Damn it, he shouldn't have said that out loud. Bakura immediately sat up and glared at Yuugi suspiciously. "You aren't going to ask me about that, are you? Hell, I bet you're just dying to know what happened the last few weeks, eh? I thought it was strange that you didn't pounce the minute I got back."

To his surprise, Yuugi shook his head. "Nope! Not dying yet! I've decided—From now on, I'm gonna wait until you want to tell me stuff."

Bakura blinked. "Really?"

"Yup! I figured that you'll tell me when you want to. I'll be here to listen then, Youtai-kun." Yuugi patted the man on the back with a small yet reassuring hand.

Bakura was impressed with Yuugi's uncharacteristic maturity. Perhaps hope for the man to join the adult mind-set world did exist.

Yuugi's face suddenly broke into a wide grin, showing nearly all of his tiny (and surprisingly sharp) teeth. "Aren't I a super special awesome friend for doing that? You're proud of me, right?"

Bakura took back what he said.

* * *

Bakura was feeling guilty. While Yuugi had kind-of-but-then-not-really graciously declined accepting an apology that even Bakura thought was needed, Marik Ishtar was a different case entirely. For that reason, when Bakura finally found himself with some spare time after work, he gathered up all of his courage and flipped open his phone. After scrolling down to the correct name, his thumb struggled between pressing the 'call' button and flipping the phone shut. He wasn't sure whether Marik would be busy now, that with all of his doctor-ish duties and all. Sometimes, Bakura still wondered how the hell Marik made it through medical school. Marik Ishtar, his childhood friend: shallow, vain, and incredibly effeminate dresser. Yet, Bakura supposed that he had to have some brains, or otherwise he wouldn't be the doctor that he was today. Hmm. Either way, that was a puzzle to mull about for a different day, Bakura decided.

"Ah, to hell with it," the man grouched. He pressed the button to dial Marik's cell phone and waited for the worst.

_"Hello, there—"_

"Marik, I—"

The voice went right over him._ "Is this thing working? Yes? Yes, I think it's working. Anyway, this is _the_ Doctor Marik Ishtar. I am obviously not here right now, so leave me a message. And if it's Bakura, the frigging bastard, then he can wait until his next life. You hear that, you pasty prick? I'm talking about you. Alright. I hope that this has a long recording time and caught all of that. It had better, anyways. Toodles."_

One side of Bakura's mouth twisted up as he glared at the phone. "Always the drama queen."

Damn it, Marik wasn't there. He hated leaving voice messages; it felt so awkward to ramble on and on into a machine when he should be talking to a person instead (not like he really preferred that, either). He rarely left messages, and usually just waited for the person on the other end of the line to call back later.

Yet despite his old habits, and the sudden desire to show up Marik, Bakura patiently waited for the electronic voice to finish suggesting to him the various actions he could take, and then waited for the beep:

"Look, Marik, I just wanted to call and say that I'm sorry for being such an ass the last time you came over, alright? We should get together some time, for old time's sake and shit." Bakura shifted his cell phone from one ear to the other. "Well, damn it, call me when you pick this up. Bye."

He set down his phone and sighed. Who knew how long it would be before the man answered his phone, especially with the tanned man's odd working schedules. His thinking was cut short when his cell phone suddenly rang. "What?" Bakura picked up the tiny contraption, reading the name 'Marik Ishtar' on the front. Flipping it open, he placed it against his ear. "Marik?"

_"Bakura."_ There was an audible huff on the other end of the line.

"You're busy right now? If you're working, I'll contact you again later."

_"Oh, no, I'm off my shift right now. I was just playing a computer game, actually, when I heard you ring."_

Bakura tried to keep the incoming irritation out of his voice. "…You heard me rang but you didn't bother to pick up?"

_"Well, I had to keep some of my pride, you twat! And anyway, that computer game is very impressive—It has weird vampires in it—"_

"I don't care. You did listen to my message, didn't you?"

_"Yeah, hold on— what the frig? That door just slammed in my face—"_

"What the hell are you talking about?"

_"I'm still playing the game— Wait, let me pause it for a second… What did you ask just now?"_

"Damn it, Marik, I asked you if you got my message."

_"Oh, that—Yeah, I was liste—"_ Marik suddenly paused. _"No. No, I didn't. No idea what you said to me in that message," _the man said._ "Certainly not an apology."_

"…You're a lying bastard."

_"Oh, will you look at that; my phone's running out of battery…"_

"Marik, don't fuck around," the white-haired man snapped, perfectly aware that he was being played. "Shit. I wanted to say that I was sorry."

_"…And?"_

"What the fuck do you mean, '_and_'? That's _it_! That's all I'm saying!"

_"You have to make it up with more than an apology, Bakura. Frig it, I am not putting off playing 'Bloodlines' because of you."_

"Damn it, fine! What do you want? Hurry up and say it already."

_"…I want a Halloween party! I've always wanted to have one! Halloween's coming up, you know. We can have one and talk, like you said in your message— I mean, like how I'm guessing you said in your message."_

Bakura rolled his eyes. "What, you want me to help you set one up? Fine."

_"Yes, there's that, but you also have to attend."_

"What?"

_"And in costume."_

"_What_?"

_"I think you'd look good as a pirate, Bakura. I'm thinking of going as one of those American-style cowboys myself—"_

"No!" Hell if Bakura was going to spend a rambunctious and embarrassing night with the likes of Marik—

_"I know you're not saying 'no' to my party invitation because you owe me. Big time, might I add,"_ Marik said shrilly, effectively drowning out any other protests Bakura could make by talking louder. _"…So I'll deduce that you saying 'no' to the cowboy idea. In that case, that's only because you haven't seen the costume I've picked out yet— Ooh! We're going to have so much fun picking out yours… And make sure that your star-headed friend stays far away from our inevitable Domino Mall man-date coming up, Bakura, you understand? Hmm… we have to get you one of those pirate hats…one with a cute, fluffy feather! And maybe a nice pair of new boots?"_

Bakura groaned.

* * *

Amidst their general schedule for the next month, in which Bakura bought groceries and ate dinner with Ryou and Kyouko as he always did; he drew pictures for the little girl as he always did; he drank his cup of tea that Ryou brewed as he always did— they also went on a few more of their 'dates'. Jounouchi always gave them that one hundred watt grin every time they dropped off the kid at his door. Bakura still had a hard time believing that the blond was doing shit with Kaiba Corp's CEO, better known as Bakura's prone-to-giving-himself-heart-attacks, perpetually disgruntled boss. (It was still completely mind-boggling, in his opinion.) The pair had decided not to explain to Kyouko the point of her daddy's and ji-chan's many rendez vous just yet; she seemed to take it upon herself that the pair were going out as friends.

Yes, the two were friends. Yet surely simple friends wouldn't have the same levels of anticipation that Bakura had; he was thrilled to go on every single outing that they had. It was…strange. He eagerly looked forward to catching another glimpse of when Ryou would _smile_ or _laugh _that way for him every time they were alone together.

The laugh was something that Bakura picked up on their third outing. Ryou had actually started _laughing_ loudly and unreservedly. He was laughing at Bakura's expense—Bakura had somehow managed to narrowly miss falling into a public fountain when the pair walked by one as a teenage boy on skates whooshed past the two— and had needed to swing his arms wildly around in order to balance himself. To save his pride, he had tried to chase after the punk afterwards, shouting obscenities all the while, but Ryou seemed to think the human windmill impression was still too amusing to pass up.

Of course, Ryou would sometimes do something similar to those effects— the smiling and laughing, that is—that Bakura wanted to witness so badly when they were with Kyouko as well, or with other people.

But it wasn't quite the same. Bakura came to realize that particular tilt of his mouth and utterance of air whenever Bakura said something stupid of funny— he could never tell what Ryou thought of his words as— and he came to realize that he was quite selfish for wanting to be the only one who saw it.

As for the physical nature of their relationship over the course of the few weeks… Bakura didn't know what to think of it. They kissed once at the end of their trip to the yakitori restaurant. Ryou had simply leaned over silently just as Bakura was about to return to his apartment and Ryou to pick up Kyouko, and kissed him lightly on the mouth.

Bakura had let out his pitiful squeak in reaction and barely managed to reciprocate for more than a few seconds before Ryou leaned back, smiled thinly, said "Good night, Bakura-san," and turned his heel.

They mostly shared very chaste kisses after that, and even those were rare. That was fine with Bakura at first; he had the ridiculous need to start a school-girl-like blushing reaction every time. However, then quite a few number of their dates—god damn it, Bakura finally had the courage to admit that they were in fact dates by their sixth one—passed this way: Ryou would bend his head slightly, kiss him, and that would be all. Bakura didn't have the same guts to initiate the same; past relationships always had his sparse girlfriends pucker up first, and the man found it too difficult and embarrassing to start now.

Bakura's body was starting to have a hard time coping; Ryou's touches made him react as he always did, and now that he was not in denial about it, the odd urges seemed to flare out more.

The one time he did accidentally lose himself in a kiss was completely unintentional. The two had come back from a trip to Domino Theatre to watch a movie (of Bakura's choosing, now that the man thought of it). When they had returned, Bakura thought nothing into it and took the first step: He turned his head to face Ryou, grabbed at the man so that his shoulders were square to his own, and leaned in.

Bakura missed.

Bakura felt his entire body freeze up in utter mortification. His lips had smacked right against the corner of Ryou's mouth. Inside his mind, a tiny Bakura had just buckled down to his knees and smacked his hands against his face to hide it, jerking back his head and yelling in embarrassment.

Through touch, Bakura could tell that Ryou didn't move in reaction other than opening his mouth slightly. Most likely in shock. Bakura held his breath. If he was lucky, maybe he'd pass out due to asphyxiation soon.

But then…Bakura could feel a soft, amused exhale expel from Ryou's lips. He felt a gloved hand cupping his chin and a tilting pair of lips move slightly to the side.

Bakura felt himself unthaw. He let himself take a much needed breath of air. Smooth and surprisingly cool lips touched the burning skin of his own mouth, and Bakura almost immediately shut down again. His skin's already reddening hue flushed twofold deeper. Bakura's hands reached up to slide over Ryou's neck in an unconscious attempt to bring him closer.

Something trilled happily in Bakura's subconscious. Again, rather than feeling calmed by the other's touch, Bakura felt only more eager— though eager for _what_, exactly, he didn't know—

Ryou was going at the same tempo that he had always gone: slow and careful. That is, until Bakura bit down on the other's slightly parted lower lip in uncontained excitement.

Ryou seemed to freeze then and suddenly Bakura, through the haze, felt the extremely unexpected sensation of Ryou abruptly and roughly shoving his tongue into his mouth.

'Oh, holy shit on a—'

Bakura made a tiny sound that sounded like '_ahmph?_' as any gentleness on Ryou's part ceased and the kiss, which had formerly been very sweet and tender, became almost violent in nature. Bakura would have thought something along the lines of 'I definitely did not expect _this_,' but anything of the sort had turned into a garbled mess and pooled viscously in a corner of his mind. What monopolized his thoughts was Ryou's _presence_, literally front and center. Teeth bit sharply at Bakura's lips and a firm and certainly ungentle hand groped—because there was no other word for it—his thigh, running up and down the side length of his upper leg. The grip tightened sporadically, as did Bakura's muffled squeaks.

Fuck, that felt _good_.

He couldn't calm himself at all. Bakura could only proceed to breathe more harshly and shiver more violently with every passing second—but this wasn't the same as his bouts of anxiety at all. In fact, this sensation was something new entirely.

It was now not only hard to breathe, but the atmosphere in general seemed to have become stifling. His legs felt weighed down, as did his chest, though there was no weight on either of them. His clothes— a long sleeved cotton shirt and a pair of jeans, felt constricting… Holy shit, _especially_ the jeans—

Hell, the last time someone got a reaction like this out of him was…'Also Ryou—' he realized.

The roaming hand roamed a little too high, the fingers brushing against something that made Bakura jolt a little and hit his teeth against Ryou's. He let out another sound: an embarrassing mix of a guttural moan and squawk—

Ryou suddenly pulled back. For a moment, Bakura thought he caught a glimpse of darkened eyes holding an odd, repressed glow; it was a kind of heat that seemed subdued in a way, like a carefully tended flame on a stove top— but then Ryou turned, bid him an unusually throaty-sounding 'good night', and left.

It was only after Bakura had gotten into his cold shower and stared at his wet tiled wall for over fifteen minutes did he then realize that Ryou had been the one to stop first then as well.

* * *

...This bothered Bakura.

They were both grown men. Certainly he shouldn't be having such stupid qualms over the matter. Yet he still thought and he mulled and he brooded over the damn subject: He began to wonder why the hell things had stopped there that time after the movies. It wasn't like he wanted to jump into—hold the thought right there, Bakura felt another fire starting under his face—

It wasn't just the damn movie time, Bakura realized. He was beginning to get self-conscious of the fact that Ryou was very distant toward him. Physically. Well, not physical in the sense that he did not come near Bakura—that would have been a major problem— but physical in terms of—intimacy. There. That was the word.

It made the man flush something terrible thinking about it. Over and over, he wondered whether he was missing something important… Actually, he knew that it had to be something important.

Did the problem stem from Bakura? Was he doing something wrong?

That was what he feared most.

He would have thought that the days of needlessly worrying were behind them. They weren't.

Ryou did not bring up the subject the next time they met. That next occasion was where they were at this very moment; Bakura glanced over at the man sitting in front of him at the tiny table they were sitting at outside on a surprisingly warm, mid October night. They were currently at a grubby little food stall at the side of the street during the outing that the two were on currently. He had just been joking when he said that he wanted to eat there as they were going home from a trip to the grocery store: Bakura couldn't imagine seeing the man with his tie and pressed shirt sitting at one of those plastic chairs and slurping down a bowl of noodles like the rest of the men there— yet Ryou had simply blinked, nodded, and sat down in a dingy plastic folding chair next to him all the same.

Ryou was currently paying more attention to furiously wiping his chopsticks clean with a napkin than paying attention to him, but Bakura felt the need to flush anyway as he watched, agape, at Ryou's hands. He was gripping the plastic utensils with one hand and running the piece of papery-cloth against the length with the other rather forcibly, and—well, shit, Bakura hope Ryou wouldn't be that rough when he did that to—

_—If_ Ryou ever did that to—

"Fuck, would you stop doing that?" he hissed, prodding Ryou with the ends of his own pair of chopsticks. "It looks—" 'Like you're mimicking something a fuck lot less innocent.' "_Bad_!" he said shortly. "The owner's gonna think his place is filthy or something."

Yes, very much like Bakura's mind. He had not been able to bring up the what-he-had-dubbed-as-the-movie-theatre-time either. He sure as hell was still thinking about it, though.

"…Well, I'm certainly not going to lick them clean," Ryou said sharply. Bakura positively choked on that statement, and the air around him seemed to get a lot hotter in a few seconds. That was quite a feat, seeing that they were surrounded by huddling, noisy people and hot steam and the sort coming from the brewing pots and pans around them. Ryou frowned at Bakura's embarrassing reaction, but then blinked again and looked away. "I didn't mean to snap at you. I'm sorry."

Bakura's blush became replaced with a frown. Ryou had done that again; there was something strange about this as well: sometimes, Ryou would snap at him on their various meetings, but the moment would never last for long. Ryou would always quickly change the subject, as if he was trying his damnedest not to let his temper flare…

Very odd.

Shortly after finishing their food, the two returned to Ginmaru Apartments. They decided to settle down the groceries first before picking up Kyouko at Jounouchi's, and were currently dropping off the goods at Ryou's apartment.

After hauling in the last bag filled with vegetables and other assorted goods that Bakura wouldn't be able to name unless they were labeled, the two decided that a short break was in order:

"Hold on—Move, you mother fucking piece of—oh, there we go." Bakura finally succeeded in prying the sliding door open, and stepped out onto the tiny stone balcony. He inhaled a deep crisp breath and exhaled slowly. "Shit, we won't be able to stand out here like this for much longer." Bakura stretched his arms fully and leaned casually against the railing. "It's going to get cold soon."

Ryou made a noncommittal sound as he walked outside as well and likewise stood against the balcony. "It's very nice out."

"Yeah, isn't it?" Bakura let out a long exhale. He drummed his fingers against the cold, hard banister.

The two gazed out at the sight of Domino City before them. Bright, tiny specks of light seemed to be sprinkled throughout the area in front of them, lighting up the night with neon signs, car headlights, and streetlight posts. In the distance, Bakura could slightly make out the glowing logo of Kaiba Corp. If he looked out far enough and turned his head, Bakura could make out the balcony doors of his own apartment…

A few minutes passed in comfortable silence until the elephant in the room that had been bothering Bakura for quite a while finally left the tip of his tongue."…Hey, Ryou." Bakura said quietly, still gazing out at the twinkling lights.

Ryou would talk about it, wouldn't he? He would let Bakura know.

"Hmm?" the man uttered quietly, not moving from his position either.

Bakura tried to find the best way to phrase his next words as he turned to face the man beside him. "Did you like eating at the food stall? …And answer me truthfully, would you?"

Ryou did not turn his head away from the lights ."…Not really," he finally said into the air. He sounded very monotonous.

Bakura was rapidly losing courage. He still took a breath, however, and tried not to let his voice shake.

"Then why'd you agree to eat there?" he asked. 'Why the hell did you do a lot of the stuff that you did?' he wondered inwardly. After waiting for a moment for an answer that didn't come, Bakura steeled his resolve and tried again. "Look, we tell each other shit, right?"

"…Of course," came the quiet reply.

"Then would you explain this for me?"

"I will if I can."

"Alright, then." Bakura exhaled audibly for a third and final time. " … I noticed. You've been holding something back."

"What are you talking about?"

"…You tell me, Ryou." Bakura said, trying not to sound too bitter. "You've been acting weird ever since you agreed to go to that yakitori restaurant: letting me choose every place even if you don't want to go, always stopping yourself before yelling at me. And the…well, after the theatre," he said simply. "It's… fucking unnatural and it's not like you at all…" He closed his mouth for a moment before asking in a quiet voice what he had been suspecting. "Is it…is it something that I did?" he asked.

Even if the smiles and laughs were things that Bakura looked forward to, he did realize the oddities.

Bakura did care.

Ryou turned to him, his face showing a rare instance of complete surprise. The expression cooled. Bakura did not think that it was intentional. "Why do you think so, Bakura-san?" he asked softly. His voice belied nothing.

Bakura was getting more agitated by the moment.

"Well…shit…" Bakura struggled for an answer. "Damn it, I don't know!' he snapped when nothing came to him. "That's why I want to know if it's my fault— I'll fix it if I could—Because, fuck, I want to make this fucking _work_, alright—?" He was stopped by a tender hand touching his upper arm.

"No, Bakura-san. It's not your fault," Ryou said quietly, looking at him. He was smiling thinly. The man exhaled slowly. Through the expressionless face, Bakura could make out genuine warm eyes. "…A while ago, I think I finally started to believe," Ryou told him. The voice was clear, but the words were anything but.

"…That…that what?"

"…That love for non-familial people can exist." Ryou turned back to face the city lights. "I have not felt it personally just yet, but I do believe that it is entirely possible…To begin to do so, you want to wish the absolute best for the other person no matter what. To support the things that they do. Is that right?"

"I…I guess." Bakura frowned again. Was Ryou evading the topic? "I don't see how that answers my question, Ryou."

"I remember what you said about wishing this not only to be about physical attraction, Bakura-san… But an actual desire to be together." Ryou said softly. "I want you to know that I understand and support that. That time at the theatre… I didn't want to bring it up myself because that was actually a moment of really blatant weakness on my part…because you were very…ah…willing that time." An uncharacteristic flush appeared over the apples of Ryou's cheeks. "Either way, I hope you forgive me." Ryou paused for a moment again. "It's just that…I plan on taking our relationship very seriously. So I had to stop what we were doing because I haven't received your answer yet."

"…I...still don't get it, Ryou."

"That's alright…Basically, I wanted you to stay, Bakura-san," the man continued patiently. "That is my primary objective. Everything else, including that after the theatre, is secondary now." He turned to Bakura then and smiled. "I tried to give you all that I could as well as support your decisions." Ryou paused here. "You say that I've been acting strange and wonder if it's your fault…in truth, it's simply because I'm not experienced with…" His voice took on a slightly lower timbre as he said the next few words. "…the right way to go about long-lasting relationships. I might have made many mistakes…But I did what I could for ours."

Bakura didn't understand completely, but he was beginning to. As usual, he felt a heated sensation travel to his cheeks. "Oh."

Ryou had let make Bakura make the silly decisions such as where to eat and what to do just because he didn't know what else he could do to support his choices. He had put in little input into everything because he didn't know what was best.

Ryou was genuinely _trying_.

"Oh," Bakura repeated lamely. "Oh, shit. I feel really stupid now. Fuck." He was turning bright red. "Fuck it…" he muttered through his hand, which he had clapped against his mouth in reaction to Ryou's words.

He didn't think that anyone else had ever done these things for him. He finally _understood _how far Ryou was willing to go for him. This entire past month—

It was both inconceivably humbling and flattering to hear all of this—from Ryou of all people—say such words. A tiny part of him, a part that had never believed that he would ever truly be able to find someone whom he would be able to stay with, slowly faded out of existence.

"I don't know what to say, Ryou. Shit..." He was at a loss for words. "Fuck," he said miserably.

"…It's quite alright, Bakura-san…"

"No, _really_. Damn…It's just that… I know I've always believed that it existed somewhere, even though I don't think I ever thought that it'd apply to me." Bakura rambled through the words he desperately wanted to say—the words that he _needed_ to say. "Relationships, I mean. That's why… You know— well, fuck…This really works out well—two people like me and you talking about this shit…" He gave a nervous chuckle. Ryou waited patiently for him to continue.

Ryou was just standing there, waiting. He had said that he would, Bakura remembered. And he had upheld that to the best of his ability.

Bakura felt things suddenly click into place in his mind. He realized that it was not 'touch' that kept him gravitating towards Ryou. It was things like his actual person— his smiles and laughs and mean comments— Ryou's willingness to walk that figurative mile for the man—

"What I want to say is that—I'm glad this is happening. This meaning—_us_—" He took a deep breath. "I think that…I've realized. It's you. N-not the anxiety shit, Ryou. It's _you_."

The light wind blew past the trees then as the man smiled that perfect smile at him, making them rustle quietly; at that moment, it looked as if the world was dancing.

* * *

The next morning, Ryou ushered a confused Bakura and a gleeful Kyouko into his car.

"Where are we going, Daddy?" Kyouko bounced up and down in her seat even with the seatbelt restraint. Bakura had the same question, albeit without the bouncing; he made do with prodding Ryou instead. Yet Ryou simply smiled slightly at the two—taking a whack at Bakura's prodding fingers first— and said little other than 'I think that you'll probably find some level of sentimental value in it, since you seem to like such things" to Bakura.

They arrived in front of a tiny building: it was a tiny, squeaky-clean kind of ice cream parlor complete with the pinstriped awning hanging over the windows and glass door. "Hey! I recognize this place!" Bakura said, staring up at the familiar shop with a slowly widening grin.

"You do, do you?" Ryou said in a faux-dismissive tone, unlocking the car doors and opening the one on his side.

"Yeah. You took your kid here all the time," Bakura continued somewhat excitedly, grinning widely at the memory. "Shit! I thought you'd forgotten about this place already!"

Ryou turned back to face him in slight confusion, one foot already out on the sidewalk. "How did you know I frequent here with her?" he asked incredulously. "I only saw you there once."

"…Just a guess." Bakura cleared his throat and quickly hopped out from his side of the car.

Ryou snorted quietly in an obvious attempt to convey his blatant disbelief.

Damn the man.

Kyouko immediately scurried to an empty booth quite a distance away from the other customers, scooting onto the large plush leather seat with a few rear wiggles and swinging arms. Bakura moved to sit on her side of the booth, but Ryou held him back with a brief tug on his jacket sleeve. "Sit next to me, Bakura-san," the man said offhandedly.

"Huh?" Bakura turned his head back. "Why?" Ryou didn't supply an explanation as to his preference in seating arrangements, but simply smiled thinly at him. Bakura blinked, an eyebrow raising in spite of himself, but obliged; Bakura sat on the opposite side of Kyouko, with Ryou right beside him.

"What are you getting, ji-chan?"

"What I always get. Plain vanilla."

"Vanilla?" the girl repeated the foreign word dubiously. "What's that?"

"What, you never had vanilla before?" Bakura was momentarily confused, until he remembered the kind of ice cream that Ryou used to buy for his daughter: extravagant, expensive ones to desperately show the child how much he cared for her… Bakura fell silent for a moment.

"Nope. What does it look like?" Kyouko urged, tugging at his hand from across the table. That quickly brought the man back to the present.

"Eh? Oh…Well…it's, uh, white colored."

"Uh-huh!" Kyouko bobbed her head, waiting for a continuation.

"And, uh…" Bakura glanced over at Ryou. Ryou seemed content to see Bakura suffer by himself, and only smiled pleasantly in return.

Bakura'll say it again: damn the man.

"Does it have rainbow sprinkles on it?"

"No."

"How about chocolate fudge?"

"No."

"Candy?"

"Damn it, I'll order one and you'll see then."

"Okay! How about you, Daddy? Which one do you want?"

"I'm not hungry, Kyouko. It's fine," the man said.

"Don't mind your old man. He'll change his mind in a moment."

A few minutes after placing the order, a plain vanilla ice cream in plastic bowl was set on the table. "Here, have a bit at least." Bakura pushed the ice cream bowl in front of the child, who seemed most unimpressed by the plain sweet in front of her.

The little girl prodded at the white blobs dubiously with a spoon, holding the silverware with her tiny fist like a lance. "Mm…Okay," she said after a few more jabs into the rapidly melting sweet. Kyouko scooped up a tiny dab with her spoon and hesitantly stuck it in her mouth. She kept it in her mouth thoughtfully for a moment, and finally swallowed. She grinned a toothy smile, and took another scoop that was easily twice as large than her first one. "It's good!" she said happily.

"…You really like vanilla, Kyouko?" The plainest and most insignificant of the lot. Kyouko shoved the bridge of her round glasses back up on her face and nodded fervently. "…How about the others?" Ryou asked again. Kyouko began to shake her head the same way, but then stopped, and guiltily gave a single head shake.

"I have good taste," Bakura said snarkily. "That explains everything."

"I'll have to see about that," Ryou murmured enigmatically, apparently displeased at Bakura's smug attitude.

"Did you change your mind yet, Daddy?" Kyouko waved a messy spoonful of ice cream towards him. "Have some, too! Open up! You'll like it, too!" she said. "I promise!"

"Hold it, you're going to get it all over the table!" Bakura quickly steadied the spoon with the eager child, overlapping the tiny hand with his own. "Oi, Ryou. Try some, why don't you?"

Ryou hesitated again, but finally nodded slightly.

"Yay! Ji-chan, help me." Kyouko tried in vain to stretch out her short arm in order to read her father's face.

"You and your stubby arms," Bakura grouched. Keeping her hand steady by holding onto her wrist, Bakura leaned in to Ryou as Kyouko simultaneously clambered to her knees in order to lean over the table.

It must have been an odd scene, a man and a little girl holding onto a spoon and feeding another grown adult ice cream. Yet Bakura didn't notice the absurdity of the what must have been ridiculous sight, and only grinned toothily when the little girl was finally successful in shoving the spoon into Ryou's slightly ajar mouth.

"How is it, Daddy?"

Ryou nodded again, an odd smile trying at his lips. "Good, thank you."

"We should come here more often! Not only with Daddy, but you, too, ji-chan!" Kyouko said excitedly. Then she appeared to go into deep thought. "I've been here a lot with Daddy, but only once before with you here, too, ji-chan."

"Yeah. That was a really long time ago," Bakura pondered out loud.

"You said that time that you were going to help Daddy, I think. By being a good friend."

There was a long silence.

"He did," Ryou finally said, giving the man next to him a very faint smile. "Bakura-san is a very good friend." Ryou took a slow inhale. "Kyouko, do you remember asking if Bakura-san will help me with a kiss?"

Bakura blinked. It was dawning on him now. Ryou had told him that morning before throwing him and Kyouko into the car that something important was going to happen today.

…Ryou was going to do it now.

Kyouko hemmed and hawwed for a moment. "Yeah, I do!" she said after a moment, eyes lighting up at the memory. "But ji-chan said that he wasn't going to."

"Ji-chan lied."

"Hey!"

"Really? Ji-chan's kissed you, Daddy? Where? On the boo-boo?"

"Yes. Daddy's hands." Ryou shifted his gloved hands, turning them so that their palms faced up. Kyouko slowly patted the fingertips with her own tiny fingers.

"Is that why you didn't like touching, Daddy?" she said after a moment. "Because they hurt?"

"Yes, Kyouko."

His daughter remained silent for a moment, and finally drew her hands away. "How about Daddy's lips?" She suddenly sounded very stern, and turned to Bakura with large, unyielding eyes. Bakura began to blink rapidly, and felt the beginnings of sweat trickling down the side of his forehead. Kyouko spoke louder after waiting a stalled moment for his response. "Did you ever kiss Daddy on the lips, ji-chan?" she demanded.

"Yes. Yes, I have." He paused. "Many times," he added for good measure. Perhaps squeaking out the last part wasn't necessary. What the hell was it with this father and daughter pair that made it so hard to keep secrets?

Kyouko looked stunned. "'Many times'?" she held up a hand and scowled. "More than the fingers here?"

He shouldn't have said anything at all. "…Yes."

Kyouko's other hand came up. "How about now?"

"…Yes."

The little girl's eyes widened to Yuugi's purple orbs-sized proportions, the girl herself seemingly boggled by the amount. "Ji-chan—" she began.

Ryou shifted a bit forward to look more squarely at his child as she slowly put her hands down. "Kyouko—"

"Ji-chan's a—a— a _prince_!" Kyouko suddenly cried, smacking her fists on the table. She must have picked up the habit from Bakura.

"…Err. Run that by me again, kid?"

"You kissed Daddy on the lips! Daddy would never let just anyone kiss him there! You have to be a prince! That's what happens in all the fairy tales! Ji-chan's the prince on the white horse!"

"Kyouko, do you know what that means?" Ryou asked, voice low and steady.

"…Does it mean that ji-chan going to turn into a frog?" Kyouko turned to Bakura with wide eyes, as if expecting him to turn green and amphibious at any moment.

"What? _No_!"

"No, Kyouko. Two people…usually kiss when they want to be together."

"Like how you kiss me on my forehead, Daddy?"

"Yes, something like that. It's slightly different for me and your ji-chan, however."

"How come?" Kyouko sounded quite determined to get to the bottom of this.

"Ji-chan and I are together in the way that your mother and I were supposed to be," Ryou finally said after a moment, his tone slightly strained and pitched. For a moment, it looked as if he was not quite willing to go on.

"But I'm different," Bakura suddenly said. Ryou turned to him in surprise, but Bakura did not break eye contact with the girl. He could handle this. They were in it together, after all.

Kyouko began chewing on her bottom lip. "Because Daddy and her weren't in love. Does that mean that you and Daddy are in love? In love is what happens in all the fairytales."

Ryou shifted a bit in his seat. "Would you be happy if that's what happens?" he asked softly.

Kyouko tapped a stubby index finger against her lip. "The fairy tales always end off with them living happily ever after. And that makes me happy for them."

Bakura exhaled a breath he didn't know he was holding. Well, that had blown over incredibly well—

"Hold up!" Kyouko suddenly said.

No, never mind.

"Ji-chan has to be a prince because Daddy let you kiss him," Kyouko continued slowly. "But how come I've never seen your white horse?"

* * *

While the issue of whether Bakura was an actual prince with a missing horse or just the court jester— whereas Kyouko was the resident young princess and Ryou the undisputed king— was never resolved, that quickly became water under the bridge:

Ryou had graciously decided to help the man clean his apartment while Kyouko was off at school the next day. Bakura thought that it was unusually nice of him, and he was very much right. Ryou managed to shake his head and frown the entire time as he helped the man sort out his papers and pencils, which were strewn all over the place. He was probably doing that on purpose, the asshole.

Bakura found that he did kind of enjoy that about Ryou. The man was not afraid to voice what he thought. But then, when had he ever done that? A memory of Ryou coughing exaggeratedly at a no-smoking sign in an elevator made Bakura snort now.

The man had pulled off his gloves to clean, leaving the thin cotton articles in a neat pile on the table. The idea that Ryou was willing and comfortable enough to bare his hands while soaking the rags to wipe things down with made Bakura feel comforted. Bakura had actually almost become too distracted by the rare sight of pale, slender hands moving about as they sorted out the living area and kitchenette.

The cleaning range moved into Bakura's bedroom before long. Ryou had never been there before, and he took a good moment to stare at the sparse surroundings. Bakura kind of wished that he had gotten into the habit of tidying up his futon every morning when he was younger. Years of not doing so caused the current unaesthetic state of his futon: the pillow was completely on the floor, the comforter rumpled and twisted to the side.

"Hmm," Ryou simply said. Bakura gave him a look and set off to chuck things out of his drawers. Paper: throw out. T-shirt: stay there. One-hundred yen coin: into his jeans pocket. Next drawer. More paper: throw out. Condoms: fucking _hell_.

Bakura stared at the mass of wrapped, tiny packages in his drawer. Where the hell had those come from? Wait. He had put them there. Way back when he had gone on that eighteenth-layer-of-hell mall trip with Marik and Yuugi.

Bakura and Ryou had not yet needed to require such things. They had just recently decided to get together, after all.

…Yes, Bakura knew how these relationships worked. He _had_ gone to a private boarding school and shared a dormitory with hormone-addled teenage boys— A flush ran through his cheeks with record speed.

"Bakura-san."

Bakura dropped the incriminating evidence out of his sweating palms and slammed the drawer shut. "What?" he said, maybe just a tad too loudly.

"Get rid of all of your broken pencils." Ryou pointed at the pile of stubs and mechanical pencil parts that he had managed to sweep together on the floor.

"Oh. Oh, right." Bakura immediately went to dispose of the unusable supplies. Oh, good, Ryou hadn't seen—

"You should make sure they're not going to expire soon," Ryou said monotonously as he continued sweeping. Bakura nearly tripped over the floor.

After a couple of trips down to the garbage disposal area on the ground floor, Bakura made it back to his apartment.

Ryou had already gotten himself some water to re-hydrate himself, and was sitting beside the futon with another filled plastic cup beside him. He pointed to it, nodding as Bakura sat down beside him to drink.

"I think that Kyouko is going to need her own room soon," Ryou said after he drained his cup. "I can't sleep in the same room with her for much longer."

Bakura grunted as he continued to gulp down the refreshing water. "She's still young. Five."

"Even so. I have someone else in mind to share it with. Do you think that that is a good idea?" There was a definite hint of unconcealed amusement here, and now Bakura knew that the bastard was doing this on purpose— He choked on the water, smacking his forearm against his mouth to wipe off the liquid that had managed to spray out of his mouth.

Ryou was requesting that he move in with him— so _that_ was why the man had so graciously helped him clean up everything— Bakura turned beet red again. It was a very touching gesture— hell, he wasn't sure how he was supposed to react to this. All this time, he thought he would live and die as a crabby bachelor. And now Bakura Ryou wanted him to move in to his apartment.

Old Man Tachibana was unquestionably not going to like this.

"…You're a conniving jackass, Ryou," he finally said petulantly.

Bakura liked the idea though. He supposed that was all that really mattered.

Ryou just laughed that laugh for him. There was a short silence that followed.

"I'm…very happy, Bakura-san." Ryou's voice was low and soft when he spoke again. The man knit his eyebrows together, staring down at the cleaned floor in front of him. "…I cannot convey my feelings as easily as you can." He turned to the other man, shifting so that he could press an open hand against Bakura's cheek. "I was never good at explaining things with words. You'll forgive me for that."

It was not so much as a request as it was an order. Yet that was the way Ryou spoke.

"I know," Bakura muttered, the ridiculous flush still on his cheeks. He knew. He understood now.

Ryou gave him that smile, the smile that Bakura had grown accustomed to desiring as he moved his hand slowly down his cheek and onto his neck. There was a light warmth in the touch. It was as if Bakura could feel all five fingertips running down his skin.

Bakura swallowed noisily, his Adam's apple nudging one of Ryou's thumbs as the slight protrusion moved in his throat. Having Ryou's hand cupped around his neck like that didn't feel particularly threatening, per se, although it did kind of look as if the man was about to strangle him single-handedly (and that wouldn't have been very pleasant.) Rather, it was another sensation that was making him feel off about himself; Ryou's steady gaze was creating a very involuntary flush to appear over his cheeks. The usually stern, hard, and cold eyes now started to hold a definite heated depth in them; Bakura couldn't really describe it; he was a bit distracted. It also didn't help that Ryou's thumb was now moving—no, _stroking_ was a better word to describe it— over the more vulnerable parts of his neck.

Ryou was staring at his cheeks now, his reddening, blotching, embarrassing cheeks. Without the gloves, Bakura knew that the man could feel the ridiculous heat that must have been emanating from his skin, especially when the hand shifted from his neck back up to the side of his face.

And then Ryou closed the gap between their mouths. There was nothing inhibiting the man this time; Ryou made sure that this was known. Teeth immediately snapped at Bakura's lips more than once, causing them to quickly swell under the firm touch. Ryou shifted so that both hands were gripping Bakura's hair back.

Bakura pressed just as much force back. He accidentally knocked over his plastic cup, splashing a bit of water onto the floor. His own hands grabbed at the front of Ryou's shirt, bunching and wrinkling the fabric.

"…Shirt off," Ryou muttered shortly in his ear. "Now." The man had lost the ability to speak in complete sentences. Bakura suppressed a quiver and complied with a throaty exhale.

He scrambled to undo Ryou's buttoned shirt as Ryou deftly yanked Bakura's shirt over his head, tangling his arms in the cloth in the process. He finally managed to pull away Ryou's undershirt as well, and lips hotly returned to where they were, now traveling to other areas not inhibited by clothing.

Bakura had seen Ryou topless before—in a hotel room somewhere, if he remembered correctly— but actually being able to touch was a different story entirely. His hands clenched at the man's hair, their mouths not breaking contact even as Ryou's hands found the zipper to Bakura's jeans and quickly zipped it down.

Bakura leaned back for much needed air, aware that he had somehow ended up sitting on the futon. Ryou kneeled before him, still in his own trousers as the belt to Bakura's jeans unbuckled.

"Shit, Ryou—" he gasped. His jeans were unceremoniously pulled down to his thighs. "Oh, damn— _Fuck—_" He felt thumbs hooking into the waistband of his boxers, the warm knuckles pressing against his hips for just a moment before that article of clothing was pulled down as well.

Lips pressed against his gaping mouth again as hands stroked his thighs. Bakura's legs were beginning to feel weak. Somewhere along the line, Ryou completely removed his jeans and underwear. He must have looked ridiculous—completely naked and—The sensation of palms cupping his hips for a moment made him jolt, and then the hands were going up his sides.

He grabbed at the belt loops of Ryou's trousers for lack of anything else better to hold. Ryou's hands felt electric. Skating fingertips grazed over his skin all around him, and Bakura could do little else but squirm and wriggle about as sensations that felt like tiny zaps of sparks went off under his skin.

"Oh, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit—" Bakura repeated in a mantra-like hiss.

"Shut up," Ryou murmured amusedly. "You have such a disgusting mouth."

"What? Well, you— (A kiss on his jaw line made him pause here.) Have— (This pause was due to a kiss on his throat.) Disgusting— (Kiss to the collarbone—) Hands!" he snarled loudly when warm, slender fingers wrapped around—

The fingers immediately left, and Ryou leaned back, a dangerously dark expression on his face.

"Oh, god, I didn't mean that, Ryou. Fuck, that came out wrong—"

"…I know you didn't mean it." Ryou gave him a twisted leer. "It's just funny to see how quickly you wilted."

"…I think I hate you now." The long, slim fingers returned to where they were. "Damn it— Oh, fuck— Damn, Ryou—!" Conversation faded off into garbled sounds and then only rapid pants on Bakura's part. Ryou's other heated hand rested firmly on Bakura's hip. Bakura clasped his hand tightly over his mouth to suppress the embarrassing sounds that he kept crying out. Bakura had had some girlfriends who touched him like this before—a long, long time ago. Ryou was nothing like they had been; he did not try to come across as either intentionally and excessively seductive nor deceivingly innocent and fragile. He was on a different level entirely, and was on a level that could neither be surpassed nor replaced.

Bakura's knees kept hitting Ryou's sides, and his bare heels hurt from repeatedly scraping rapidly against the floor. Yet Bakura knew that nothing but the walls burning down around him would have made him able to stop. At this rate, he would have to be able to notice the burning walls first, let alone do something about them.

Bakura managed to take his hand away from his mouth, taking in a deep breath of fresh oxygen and expelling it just as quickly. His heart continued to beat in overdrive, thudding deliriously away. Bakura's palm had a thin sheen of sweat on it, as well as slight teeth marks and saliva. It joined its twin, grabbing onto the sides of Ryou's waist.

They slid down the heated skin until they hit jutting hipbones, trying to slide forward in order to undo the button of Ryou's trousers. He never made it that far; before his hands left their position on Ryou's hips, his fingernails scratched red lines down the skin when Ryou's thumb swiped roughly across—

"_Shit_!" he snarled as his hips bucked up. He caught a sight of Ryou's expression then— His cheeks were flushed a light pink, his mouth slightly open to reveal red lips that were no longer pursed into a thin line and the very tip of his tongue, which rested just between his teeth—

And there was only a strange kind of hunger in the other's eyes, where the black of his pupils enlarged until his warm brown irises appeared as nothing more than thin amber rings around the black.

At that moment, Bakura felt his entire body seize up at the sight. The tension reached to formerly inconceivable levels. He felt Ryou's lips against his mouth reassuringly again as unbearable tautness suddenly relaxed. A shuddering sound ripped out of his throat.

When Bakura felt himself settle into the world again a moment later, he saw a fuzzy image of Ryou languidly taking something out of his own trouser's pockets. Rather, two things, as Bakura realized when his eyes focused again. One was a familiar tiny square, and the other a palm-sized bottle filled with a kind of transparent, viscous-looking liquid.

There was a sound of a wrapper being torn open.

"…Oh…god. You—you took that from my drawer!"

"Yes. I checked, expiration date's not for another year, luckily."

There was a sound of a bottle being popped open.

"You…you were carrying that around with you?"

"Mhmm." The other man uttered nothing more than a low, throaty murmur.

"…Ryou… why the fuck are you smiling like that? Quit it, it's fucking creepy…"

"…You've done so well on the receiving end so far. Surely this time as well will be all right?"

"Holy mother fucking shit! _Ryou—_"

…That scheming bastard.

* * *

As October drew to a close, so did the amount of warm days of the year. In fact, by the time October twenty third hit, the weather was reminiscent of early late February, when Bakura and Ryou had first met. Ryou hadn't bothered to break out his classic black pea coat and blue scarf just yet, but Bakura figured that it was about time to.

Nonetheless, Kyouko held stubbornly to the idea that the three of them should have one last get together outside on an unusually warm day forecasted two days ahead.

"An amusement park?" Bakura made a face when Kyouko first suggested the idea, and turned to roll to his other side and face the back of the sofa. "That's such a teenager dating spot! Besides, there's all that noise and mess. No way."

Kyouko whacked his back with a stuffed animal repeatedly. "But ji-chan! It'll be too cold to go later! Daddy says that tomorrow's going to be the last warm day of the year! If we don't go now, it's gonna start to snow and everything and then we'll have to wait 'til next year!" Kyouko pleaded.

"Then count me out. I don't want to go anytime of the year." He'd take the cotton-stuffed blows of Kyouko's plush cat anytime.

"But _ji-chan_!" Kyouko said again, grabbing at his exposed ear and tugging at it as she yelled. "I want you to come, too! It'll be so much more fun if you do!"

Bakura had too much of a soft spot for the girl.

It seemed that everyone in Domino Park had the same idea that the miraculously warm weather needed to be taken advantage of. Practically everyone was in short sleeved shirts. Even Bakura had given in to temptation and decided to only don a thin cotton tee shirt and jeans for the day. Ryou, of course, stuck to his usual long-sleeve button downs and trousers even at a place for fun, the weirdo.

After getting on a roller coaster with the two (and almost simultaneously vowing never to go on one again when the little boy in front of his seat upchucked a meter away), and then trying his hand (and failing quite miserably) at quite a large number of (most definitely rigged) carnival games, and after which they went on something called the 'Ultra-Spin' (which had that prefix for good reason), Bakura resigned to eating ridiculously overpriced food with Ryou and Kyouko at one of the smatter of tiny food stalls scattered around the park.

"Shit, it's hot," he muttered, fanning himself in vain with a hand. The luke-warm soda going down his throat wasn't helping either. "Ahh, I should've just stayed home."

"Maybe you should put your hair up in a ponytail, ji-chan! That's what Daddy always tells me to do when it gets too hot," Kyouko suggested brightly, slurping her own sugary drink with gusto that only a child could achieve.

"What? No, I look ridiculous when I do that."

"I'd rather put up with your embarrassment than your whining," Ryou said, setting down his sandwich. "Kyouko, let Daddy have one of your scrunchies." Kyouko obediently undid one of her pigtails and handed her father the bright pink hair tie with a rather ridiculous plastic cartoon figure's head on it.

"Aw, hell, no! You are not putting that in my hair—"

"Don't force me to take drastic measures, Bakura-san—" Ryou snapped, leaning over—

Bakura seldom put up his hair; first of all, it made the tangles in it very apparent if he didn't meticulously use a comb or brush while doing so, and secondly, it made him look—

"Ji-chan! You look so cute!" the girl bearing the twin hair tie exclaimed. "You should keep it up all the time!"

"I look like a _girl_!" Bakura snapped, trying to undo the horrifying pink monstrosity. "Shit, it's not coming out— Damn it, Ryou! Ouch, it's stuck!" Bakura pulled at the tie, yanking at the strands of hair that were tangled in it as well. "Oi! You did this on purpose!"

"What are you blathering about? If you combed your hair on a regular basis, then you wouldn't be having this problem. Just leave it there; I didn't bring a comb with me." Ryou innocently took a sip of his iced tea.

"What?"

"Yay! Ji-chan has to wear it all day now!"

Bakura groaned, smacking his forehead against the tiny (and probably germ-infested) table they sat around.

After a visit to the fun mirror house, and cackling loudly and obnoxiously when he watched Ryou walk right into a deceivingly normal mirror (and receiving a painful cuff from the annoyed man over the head afterwards), the three resigned to walk around the park for a bit.

"…Oh! Oh! Oh! Let's go on that one next!" Kyouko pointed eagerly at a purposely dilapidated building to their right after the three finished their food. 'Haunted House: Ride At Your Own Risk!' it read in blood-reminiscent kanji and hiragana. If that didn't clue one in on what freakish monstrosity it was, the drawn posters of visitors clasping at their faces and wailing in silent agony portrayed all that was needed about the attraction. "Can we, ji-chan?"

Bakura gave the building a once over and blanched. He was never incredibly fond of these kind of rides. There was something about random things purposely jumping out and scaring people that he found highly immoral. "…Ask your dad."

"Can we, Daddy?"

"Ask if ji-chan's afraid of a little haunted house."

"Ji-chan, Daddy asks if you're afraid of a little haunted house."

"Tell your dad that he's a jackass."

"Daddy, ji-chan says that you're a—"

"Bakura-san, watch your mouth. You will say no such thing, Kyouko."

A little while later, Bakura found himself staring at the plastic cartoon face attached to Kyouko's hair tie, listening to the awful creaking sounds of their cart rolling on the tracks through the dark building of the attraction. The little girl had decided to sit in the front of the four passenger cart all by herself, leaving her father and Bakura in the back.

Bakura could feel a cold sweat working over his entire body. "I don't know how your kid can stand this kind of stuff," Bakura hissed, palm flat against his rapidly beating heart as yet another mummified figure pounced out. Kyouko had just shrieked delightedly and clapped her hands in amusement. He glared at Ryou, who was sitting incredibly calmly with one leg over the other, hands folded on top of his knees. "And you, too! What the hell?"

"I happen to like 'this kind of stuff', Bakura-san. I find the occult and supernatural fascinating."

"…I always knew you were at least a little creepy."

Ryou snorted. "Either way, it's not my fault that you're so timid."

"I am not _timid—_" The burst of denial was quickly swallowed by the man's scream as a coffin on the side popped open.

"Of course not. Anyway, if you really are uncomfortable, just look for the exit signs. That should help you realize that this is fake." Ryou was giving him a disapproving look. Bakura could always tell, even in the pitch black.

"I _know_ that this is all fake—" Cue another yelp as a loud scream erupted somewhere above them.

"Then perhaps you would like to hold my hand?" Ryou asked condescendingly. "Maybe that will help."

"Stop making fun of me!" Bakura snapped, which unfortunately came out as a whine instead.

Kyouko's joyous giggles echoed loudly, contrasting with Bakura's sudden yelps and screams as the ride continued.

Shortly after that fiasco, the three took a ride on a Ferris wheel that seemed to overlook the entirety of Domino City. The ride had thirteen cars attached. It looked like a death trap.

"We're so high up!" Kyouko yelled, peering out the glass plane of the window to look outside. She had placed her knees on her plastic seat, pressing her face and hands against the thick glass. "Daddy, ji-chan, look outside! It's so pretty outside!"

Bakura spared a glance outside. "Yeah. Nice." He didn't have much of an affinity for heights, either.

"We should stay here forever!" Kyouko suddenly said, whipping her head to the side to face her father and Bakura. "Can we?"

"You wish, kid," Bakura grumbled, rubbing tiredly at his face. He gave a half-hearted stretch. "I can't wait to get home."

"That's what I mean! We should stay in Domino City forever! Me, Daddy, and ji-chan!" Kyouko jumped out of her seat and plopped herself unceremoniously between the two adults, landing on one of either of their laps. "Sorry, ji-chan!" she quickly said when Bakura squawked out loud and nearly doubled over at the unexpected weight. "Can we?" she asked again, cocking her head back to stare at them above her.

"…Of course, Kyouko," Ryou said softly, patting her head and readjusting her glasses, which had tilted in her jump.

The other white-haired man stared out at the bright sky, noting the slow, fluffy clouds drifting drowsily by. "…Yeah. That would be nice, I think," Bakura added finally. "That would be really nice."

The three had some cotton candy— Ryou's treat— shortly afterwards and decided to call it a day. As they crossed the park towards the entrance, though, Kyouko urgently pulled them back with sticky hands: "Wait, wait! We haven't gone on that yet!" She pointed at the carousel located right on the left. "Can we go on that one before leaving? It has horses!" She paused. "Though the ones that ji-chan draw are prettier."

"You are going to get sick if you ride on that." Ryou was aghast, and shook his head firmly. "You just ate!"

"Aww, but Daddy…"

Bakura, who was quite pleased by the indirect compliment, decided to interject. "It doesn't matter; we'll just throw up in your dad's car anyway if anywhere. He'll be the one to clean it up," Bakura said nonchalantly to Kyouko, who nodded fervently to Bakura's logic.

"That's what _you_ think, Bakura-san—"

"Let's go, kid," Bakura said loudly, effectively cutting off Ryou. "Last ride of the day!"

"Yay!"

"I'll wait at the side. Don't expect any sympathetic words from me when something happens."

The two wormed their way into the carousel line and waited their turn. It was a pretty big attraction, complete with the grainy, music-box-like sound and bright light bulbs adorning the sides. In the bustle, Ryou had disappeared among the masses of other parents with their children. After he made sure that Kyouko was hanging tightly to the pole attached to the gigantic, extravagantly adorned and colorful pony, Bakura swung a leg over his own ride right beside her, on another just as decorative steed.

As the ride started, Bakura could hear Kyouko squealing with glee. And soon, they were spinning at such a speed that made everything rather blurry. The only way Bakura could tell that Kyouko hadn't flown out of her seat was by her laughter, high and cheery. And yet, even as the world spun around the two, Bakura was pretty sure that he could make out a white-haired man with a stern expression and gloved hands standing just outside the gate surrounding the carousel.

Bakura knew that it was pointless to wave at the figure; it was doubtful that anyone in the crowd would be able to see him, especially since the ride was going so fast. Yet there was another reason as well:

Bakura knew that Ryou would still be standing there afterwards.

After taking a needed bathroom break, the three began their journey back home. The sun had already begun to set by the time Ryou made it to the highway, creating a rosy glow in the sky that sighed warmth despite the late time of the year. Kyouko had fallen asleep in the back seat sometime during the ride, leaving the two adults in the front by themselves.

"Shit. What a day." Bakura groaned a bit as he attempted to stretch his arms in the confines of the car. "Oh, fuck, my back hurts. I'm definitely going to feel that tomorrow."

Ryou made a noncommittal sound.

"Damn it, Ryou, don't you care? I'm in pain here."

"Don't be so dramatic; you're acting as if you're an old man."

"Hey! I _am_ in pain! And I'll have you know that my birthday's coming up. I'm not getting any younger."

"Yes, I know. November eleventh," Ryou said, and then muttered under his breath, "But still an age where you should hardly be complaining about body aches."

Bakura pretended that he didn't hear that last jibe. "Well, shit. I didn't think you'd remember." Bakura had to admit that he was slightly flattered.

"Yes, well, whatever imaginary pain you're feeling, you'll heal by the time your birthday comes around," he said off-handedly as he drove the car onto a highway. Ryou turned to him then and smiled a quirky little smile before going back to face the road.

"You're such a horny bastard, Ryou," Bakura muttered petulantly.

"I know. I don't consider that as a complaint."

"Fuck you."

"Hmm. Is that my gift to you, then?"

"Oh, shut up." After a few minutes of comfortable silence, Bakura spoke up again. "Hey, Ryou." The topic of birthdays gifts had rung a bell in his head. In particular, the gift that Bakura had gotten for Ryou. He was rather surprised that it had never surfaced in his mind. But then, the present and future were much more promising than remaining in the past. Either way, it seemed like now would be a good opportunity to ask…

"Yes?"

"About your birthday. You know, in September."

"Yes, my birthday is in September, but thank you for clarifying. What about it? It's passed already."

"I know that! I meant my gift!" Bakura swallowed. "The gift that I got for you— the drawing that I made," he elaborated rather ineloquently, in case the man couldn't remember. "Do you…still have it or anything?" he asked, trying to sound indifferent.

"Of course. It's at home." Ryou said in reply, undivided attention on the road ahead of them. There was heavy traffic on the highway, and the car came to a complete stop before long.

"…Oh." Bakura cleared his throat after a moment. "Well, did you like it?"

Ryou turned to him and blinked rapidly behind his glasses, as if he was taken back by the question. "Of course," he said again. "Haven't I ever thanked you for it?"

"Err…No, actually."

Ryou blinked again. "That's right, I haven't." A corner of his lips tilted into the familiar curl again. It was odd how quickly the look had become so natural on him. "…But you're expecting a 'thank you' now."

"Well…" Bakura trailed off and immediately scowled. "Well, if you're going to get all shirty about it..." he snapped, turning the other way so that the man couldn't see his expression.

Ryou supplied him with another smile. "Thank you. It was very beautiful. You have a lot of talent."

Bakura grunted.

"You don't think I mean it?"

"How would I know if you meant—" Bakura began to grouch. But before he could finish his sentence, Bakura suddenly found his head being cradled by a careful hand and his lips against Ryou's again. The kiss was brief but warm, and as usual, it left Bakura very breathless. Bakura traced his hand over his lips afterwards and felt the old heat rushing to his face.

"I'm not very good with words, as you know…so I hope that conveyed my gratitude a bit better."

Bakura nodded weakly.

"Did it?" Ryou's tone was slightly teasing.

Bakura immediately flushed puce again. He didn't think he'd ever be able to stop turning that particular shade. "Yes, damn you! You know I can't think when you do that!"

Ryou laughed; it was the crisp, clear sound that made Bakura turn a deeper hue of purple. It was strange how this sound became so natural on Ryou as well. When his laughing died down, Ryou gave the man beside him another thin smile. "Thank you, Bakura."

"You said that already," Bakura snapped accusatorially, noting that Ryou had dropped the usual honorific from his name.

"No." Ryou took hold of Bakura's hand and squeezed gently. Even through the glove, the man could tell Ryou's hand was very warm. Bakura blinked dumbly up at the smiling man. "Thank you for everything."

* * *

A while later back at Kaiba Corp, the Great Exalted Ruler known as Kaiba Seto was once again having a self-induced heart attack, this time over some internet phenomenon called KOGTAS or something. After the aggravated shouting of 'I'm going to sue the pants off of this guy' and 'This is what he's going to get for messing with Kaiba Seto' carried over onto another floor, Bakura simply rolled his eyes and went back to work.

The Big Man was without doubt going to have himself in a hospital bed before Christmas rolled around. That was saying something, seeing that the holidays were just a few weeks away.

A few minutes of drawing away on his tablet later, then man sighed. The white-haired man could tell when he was being spied on. And he was definitely being spied on at the moment. "Mutou, quit lurking around," Bakura said, not even bothering to look away from the computer screen. "You're utter shit at hiding your hair."

"Darn it!" a voice coming from behind an (unusually colored) fake, small Christmas tree at the side of their workspace said. Yuugi popped into sight over the tiny green foliage. "Was I that obvious?" the man pouted, sitting in his seat.

"Yes," Bakura deadpanned, continuing to draw on his graphics tablet. "Extremely obvious. So obvious that a blind person could have seen you."

"Wow, Youtai-kun! You're expressive today," the shorter man said, taking this as his cue to roll over on his chair. Resting his chin on his palms against Bakura's desk, Yuugi stared at Bakura.

"What?" Bakura grouched after it seemed pretty apparent that Yuugi would have been content eyeing Bakura for the rest of the day in that position.

"You look happy today, Youtai-kun. So I'm glad." Yuugi beamed widely.

"Shut up. You're just filled with that cheesy crap, aren't you?"

Yuugi simply laughed again, and settled down to watching him with that grin again. Bakura opened a new bag of chips; he still had a liking for them, although the need for the stuff certainly wasn't as strong as it was before… because of Ryou.

Aware that Yuugi was still happily watching him, Bakura realized that he would have been lying if he said that he wasn't the slightest bit sorry for neglecting Yuugi for the past… month, now that he thought about it. He had made up with Marik a long time ago; rather, Yuugi had been the one to say that Bakura needn't explain to him about whatever was on his mind if the man didn't want to.

But it was perhaps just still a sliver a guilt that caused him to say:

"I had a dream with you in it a while back, I think. At least, I'm pretty sure it was you." Bakura frowned. He wondered what made him think of that dream all of a sudden. He could no longer remember how the man in his dream was dressed like, or the exact things that he said. He did remember the hair, though— who could ever forget that hairstyle? Hmm. It was probably Yuugi then; no one else that he knew had anything remotely like it.

Yuugi immediately lit up like Bakura thought he would. "Really? What was I doing? Did I say something really deep and mind-blowing?"

Bakura grunted, rubbing his chin slowly as he tried to recall it. "I don't really remember. You were just kind of standing there. And you said something weird in it. Weirder than what you say in real life, I mean."

"Oh, wow, Youtai-kun! That's so super special awesome! I came to you in a _vision_?"

"What the hell? When did a little dream become a fucking vision?" Bakura rolled his eyes towards the ceiling. "I don't remember what you said anymore, anyway."

"Even so, Youtai-kun! I bet it has some really important significance. Like predicting the future! Or fulfilling your _destiny_!"

"Yeah, you're definitely filled with that cheesy crap today."

"Aww, don't be like that!" Yuugi scooted closer in his chair. "You know, Youtai-kun. I said it once, but I'll say it again: You look über happy today! What gives?"

Bakrua grunted, but didn't respond.

"_And_," the man sang the word, "I've been noticing that you've been leaving as soon as you can lately again." Yuugi elbowed him in his side. "Could this smiling, talking side of Youtai-kun possibly have to do with that?"

Bakura frowned. Did he not smile or talk otherwise? "I'm pretty sure that we had this exact conversation before, Mutou. What happened to the whole I'll-wait-until-you-tell-me shit?"

"I got bored of that," was the pointy-haired man's casual answer.

"…Figures."

"Oh, come on! I really want to know!" Yuugi wheedled childishly. "If you finally tell me, then I wouldn't have to keep asking you!" Bakura rolled his eyes at this statement. They were back to the old days, it seemed. "I promise!" Yuugi continued. He put on his kicked-puppy dog face. "Don't you trust your super special awesome friend?"

"I trust you about as far as I can throw you," Bakura answered snarkily.

"Wow! That would be really far! You trust me that much?" Yuugi whacked a hand over his chest, roughly where his heart would be. "T-That's really flattering, Youtai-kun! I'm really touched!" Yuugi's eyes had turned runny, like large purple raw eggs.

Bakura groaned. "Oh, you're not going to start sniffling on me, are you?" Yuugi shook his head, biting his wobbling lip almost comically. After giving the other man a long study, frown still deep set on his face, the white-haired man leaned back into his chair and thought for a moment. He'll admit it (though never out loud, and certainly never to the short man in front of him), Yuugi was a good guy. He never did apologize to him, even if Yuugi did imply that it was alright that he didn't… Maybe he _should_ let Yuugi into the loop for once. The guy did wait all this time, after all.

"Fine, damn it." Bakura slowly reached for a chip from his potato chip bag and crunched on it. After thinking about how to explain everything for a moment or so, a smirk surfaced on Bakura's lips as he said this: "Remember my neighbor? I'm doing him…"

Yuugi nodded understandingly, waiting patiently for Bakura to finish his bite so that he could finish his sentence. "You said this before. A favor, right?" he supplied helpfully.

Actually, what Yuugi suggested was kind of true. Ryou had in fact convinced him to pick Kyouko up after school today; the other had some extra things to do at Satou Prep and wouldn't be able to make it to the school in time.

As such, Bakura's grin became wider. Yuugi was going to have an absolute field day with this. Ah, well. Might as well get comfortable. He casually placed another chip in his mouth before leaning back in his chair.

"That, too."

* * *

**Author's Note:**

I love uproar endings, don't you? I think this is why I ended with Bakura and Yuugi talking with each other, rather than something else, like Bakura and Ryou talking or doing something. Haha, I really love Yuugi in general, and I have a bit of a soft spot for him especially in this fic (shameless me). I've always imagined those two ending this story, with Bakura finally 'giving in' to Yuugi's demands. Yuugi gets what he deserves! XD

Whoops, almost forgot: *puts on the song 'So Contagious' by the artist Acceptance.* This was the song that the lovely **Raine20oo **used for her manga music video for this fan fiction. The link to the Youtube video can be found on my profile. It was suggested by the helpful **KuroTsubasaKun **to put this song in the story, but I really had no idea where I could fit it. So here it is in the ending credits, eh?

I would have split this chapter up into smaller bits—I try to make each chapter about eight thousand words each, but because of my crappy updating skills, I've just been finishing chunks and chunks that are close to or about twice that amount and uploading those. Hahaha… That's why this is how a bunch of updates for this story happened, I think. I'd have split this chapter into two if I managed to update sometime between August and December of last year. T_T

It's the second year anniversary from when this story was published! Exactly two years ago on January 15th, 2010, I posted this up on this site. Finished it just in time for the virtual celebration. Here's some apple cider for you!

References! First off, Domino Park does exist in the original Yugioh! series. Yuugi and Anzu went on a date there, complete with a roller coaster, a 13 car Ferris Wheel (though the cars exploded on Yuugi's date), and even an Ultra-Spin in the background. For YGOTAS, there were three references to the show! One was Marik playing the game 'Bloodlines'. The second one was the dressing up as pirates and cowboys… And I don't need to point out the third one, I think. Ahh, I hope that last one made sense.

Ryou with his canon fascination with the occult and supernatural does appear in another fan fiction: the first one I ever posted up, now called 'His Iron Throne.' Currently, I am still drafting the rewrite.

Ahh, that damn M-rated scene. That option in the poll won in a landslide victory. 55:13 ratio. 80 percent of voters voted 'yay'for the explicit scene, and 19 percent (doesn't even add up to a full one hundred ._.) for 'nay.' Majority rules, I guess… I tried my best with the scene. *headdesk* As you guys can see, I like writing stories with no iron-wall seme/ uke relationships unless there are very specific reasons.

Did the title of this chapter clue you in? 'Muse.' To tell you guys the truth, I kind of wondered why the hell I chose such a silly title for this story at first: 'Of Elevators and Muses,' but now I guess it's all for the best. Ahahahaha. Click on the chapter title scroll option. See the title of the first chapter? This truly has been a story about elevators and muses, hasn't it?

This isn't the end of my fan fiction writing career, I hope. If you enjoyed this story, please feel free to read the other stuff I've posted up. There are still many new stories I have yet to write as well! Whether you've been around since this story was just published, came here via deviantART, or just decided to pick this up and read this story just now, thank you all for reading.

Peace out, my friends, and please leave a few words of thought on your way out. :)

後會有期。


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